Earliest Memories

[ysabetwordsmith]

This article is really about why most people don't remember being babies. 

It doesn't mention the fact that some people DO remember.  But the logical explanation connects to at least one reason for remembering: those of us who come into this life with some memories already in place.  Think of it as a scaffold.  If you already have some memories, then you press that template into the barely-formed brain of your new body.  This makes it easier to attach new memories immediately.  The physical plasticity means you'll probably still lose some stuff, but you are way ahead of people who have to start from scratch.

Comments

Clarification

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly how is being a "baby" defined in this instance? Are toddlers included in this definition or only infants? I can boast a good handful of memories from before the age of 2. One I know for certain occurred before I was 15 months old, but I can't remember anything from before I could walk. What memories are supposed to already be in place when we come into this world?

Filled with curiosity,
Firstar28

Re: Clarification

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Exactly how is being a "baby" defined in this instance? Are toddlers included in this definition or only infants? I can boast a good handful of memories from before the age of 2. One I know for certain occurred before I was 15 months old, but I can't remember anything from before I could walk. <<

I'm not sure how they're defining it. Most people seem to have their earliest memories around age 2-3. But it can be earlier, or later.

>> What memories are supposed to already be in place when we come into this world? <<

Depends on the person. Most don't seem to have any. For people who have farmemory, there are categories of memories that commonly stick, including:

* highs, like getting married
* lows, like dying
* repetitions, like skills or habits
* principles, like cultural concepts or natural laws

[gingicat]

My daughter reinforces her favorite early memories. "Mom, do you remember when... How old was I when... I'm still mad at [brother] for pushing me down the stairs on my first birthday. Why did he DO that?" (The latter was that he was not quite three and a half and was trying to help her get to me.)

[capri0mni]

And that article, even though the author probably did not intend it, gives some clue as to why my own personal memory (At six months, or thereabouts) is the particular one that stuck: it was important to me, and it's basically the moment I decided what my life passion would be (though not sure how, exactly):

We had company over, and mother had just finished trying to feed me mashed peas and pureed carrots (still really do not like canned peas)-- we were on the floor, and our neighbors were sitting on the couch opposite us. Mother was engrossed in conversation with them, and had laid me on the floor beside her... But the back of my head was uncomfortable, because it was right against the hearthstone of the fireplace.

I remember quite distinctly looking up at the underside of her chin, and feeling frustrated because I didn't have the words, yet, to get her attention and tell her clearly what was wrong. And I also remember the awareness of how damned important this Communication thing is-- especially in getting other people to understand my internal experience. ...And that's a memory I've replayed to myself repeatedly through child- and adulthood.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

What I think is my earliest memory is one I couldn't 'confirm' other than the dates of the car involved. Nothing 'interesting' other than it was a memory that stuck, perhaps because it replayed every other time the basic conditions applied. "Hurry up and wait."

(and when you have a captive audience, check the sight lines and make sure it's not a bad view. There is at least one hospital that started putting a wallpaper on the ceiling so at the least people had some stimulation.)

[krait]

Huh.

I always assumed it was a frame-of-reference deal, at least in part.

Once, out of the blue, I triggered a really old memory, and it was so weird once it had gone, because -- I was looking up at the door! I couldn't reach the doorknob! I didn't really know where I was!

It all felt perfectly normal during the moment of remembering, but once I'd shaken it off? It felt so weird. I pieced together when/where it must have been by what I could remember of the remembering (my height --> my likely approximate age --> where I would have been at that age; + cross-reference to likely settings there) but it was almost like looking at a film: an examination of something after the fact, instead of being able to call up the memory and run through it as with a 'normal' memory.

That (and another incident, resulting in the fact that my brain tries to tell me that I remember being on the plane from X to Y, when I'm really remembering that I saw a photograph of me on the plane from X to Y) gave me the inkling that perhaps we lose old memories because -- to use a computer analogy -- they're in a different format. So much of our experience is viscerally encoded; we don't have to think about how tall we are in relation to, say, reaching out to open a door, or compared to a crowd of people around us, so memories which contradict our experience are going to be "unplayable" most of the time because we're no longer in tune with it.

Do other people find memories triggered by small physical things, like touching an object or seeing something from a specific vantage point? I'm really curious whether this is a "me" thing, or a more general thing, because it seems like an interesting way that memories could be shuffled out.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, your mentioning an airplane triggered a memory for me. At least, I haven't thought about it for a long time.

When I was 2 we went to San Diego to visit my uncle. I can remember riding in the shuttle with the bags (not wearing a seat belt was a novel experience for me). I know now, because I have been told, that the first plane we got on had engine trouble. All I remember is Mom being scared and saying the plane was broken and praying out loud for our safety. I have also been told that we landed and got in another plane, but I don't actually remember that either. I remember being uncomfortable sitting in my parent's laps the whole flight. I remember coloring on the little table. That's all.

As far as triggering memories, most of mine seem to be sort of chained into certain modes of thought. I start to think of one thing and it leads to another and another. I won't think about something for years and some topic of conversation or something I read will start a chain reaction and lead me back to the memories.

I have a lot of pretty early memories, but I have to be careful to differentiate between what I really "remember" and what I understand as an adult now. Like with the plane memory. I "know" that we switched planes because I've been told so. I don't actually remember it. I also now know that the plane trouble was probably not that dangerous. We landed safely and got on another plane and nothing bad happened. At the time I thought it was pretty bad because my mother was afraid, but now I know that she was terrified of flying at the best of times. She had to take anti-anxiety meds before she even got on the plane.

Sincerely,
Firstar28

[songspinner9.livejournal.com]

My earliest memory is when I was just over one year old. My mom pinpointed it (both time and location) with astonishment one day when I described it...I was looking WAY WAY WAY up at a window, outside of which were fireflies, and the rug under me was blue-green, and there were Fisher-Price Sesame Street people on the floor around me. It is weird what sticks...

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Huh. Maybe that's why I remember this:

Being held up over someone's shoulder (I don't remember who, it was probably by Mother, because at that point I didn't like Dad to hold me), looking way back across the water at a big, big building, and a big, big rocket ship. And I knew, even at that point, what a rocket ship was, and what it did.

It's just the one frame, I don't remember anything said or done or whatever, and I only have little snippets of the rest of that trip, and nowt else until winter, and only a few more random frames until the following May... but that rocket ship made an impression on me.

It was July, 1969, and I was this many (holds up two grubby little fingers).

Oddly, I don't remember anything else about the entire Apollo program as it happened; the next thing I remember seeing *live* was Enterprise's glide test, which we got to watch in school just like our parents' generation had watched Mercury and Gemini and Apollo. Of course, I read everything I could get my hands on about space and planets and astronomy and weather, but as for actually *seeing* spacecraft, either face to face or on live TV, Apollo 11, sitting there steaming on the pad in the sweltering Florida heat two weeks before my da had to get back to his bunker and track the sucker over half a million miles There And Back Again, is the only memory I still have of the whole 400,000-person program... but *damn*...

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

I remember lying on my back, making my crib mobile go by kicking it with my toes. It was moons and stars, and glowed in the dark. My mother dates the memory to my being under 4 months old. That's when they lowered the crib mattress, and once it was down I could no longer reach the mobile until I learned to sit myself up. I also remember being very frustrated, because I knew the words I wanted but didn't know how to make my mouth shape them. The best I could manage was "singing" the cadence and tone. Since I had mastered mama, da-da, and a few other words by 8 months, it's probably before that, but I really don't know. I have memory, but absolutely no sense of time.

Come to think about it, I still have no sense of time....

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That is impressively early.

Yeah, the consensus timespace continuum has no real grip on me either, which is often inconvenient.