Something must be slightly unusual about me.. because I have retained some very early memories..
I have confirmed with my parents the placement and orientation of my crib. I can tell you the exact process that my parents performed to change my diaper. I remember being bathed in my tub with my toys.. list goes on. These are visual memories, I can see them right now. I'm nearly certain they are real.. it's possible my brain has made some up, but I've confirmed enough with my parents that I feel confident that they are real.
I swear I remember waking up in the middle of the night once in my crib.. heart beating out of my chest.. I was really scared of something.. and I just remember this pure consciousness .. staring up into the darkness. Same consciousness I have now.
A lot of early memories are induced, e.g. parents told you a story, and your brain "fills it up", so you think it's your own memory, but it's actually more of imagination. Or you imagined where the crib were, and parents confirmed, so you think you remembered.
Watching crime witness testimonies reveals how much we actually imagine, not remember.
My earliest memory is 2ish, being gurneyed from a hallway with my mom (clearlyu upset) into the surgical area before my first open heart surgery. The memory faded over time, until it became a memory of a memory around age 45...I can tell there was a change from remembering detail, like anything about the wheeled bed, to the base characteristics of the memory.
My Mom didn't tell me the story, nor could she have described the moment, as she doesn't remember. I remember. On the other hand, I do remember that my primary cardiac surgeon, Dr. Rosengart, was not part of the entourage of staff wheeling me in. I met Rosengart again when I had my last open heart surgery at age 31.
It's uncommon for people to have memories from age 2, but I've met quite a few people with early memories, as it can be a fun topic to discuss. Parents try to anchor kids first memories as happy, but my anecdata doesn't seem to fit a pattern of trauma or banal or happy. Early fixed memories seem utterly random.
I've wondered whether one can train a child to remember things by recalling things that happened to them repeatedly, but I guess it will create such an induction. And they don't even have language to understand "Remember Monday, 2 days ago, grandma visited.".
And perhaps under a certain age, the brain really has no programming to store anything as memories...
It’s actually remarkably easy to induce false memories in people. There’s substantial research on this.
There’s nuance here. I think I experienced the same thing maybe not quite as young but I distinctly recall the crib I was in as well as the day I got upgraded to a regular bed. Along with that I remember specific objects that I had around me which were later confirmed by my parents’ photos.
There a potential selection bias in the criminal witness example which is capturing adult memories that may be less sticky than those from an early age. That could explain some differences there.
>>I have confirmed with my parents the placement and orientation of my crib
Is there any way you have seen those things in some of the old family pictures? Because I know I am definitely guilty of that, I can swear I remember bits from my family's trip to Pompeii when I Was 2 years old, not much but little bits here and there, and only when I was older I noticed that what I remember is suspiciously similar to what my mum has in the family album from that trip(which I most likely would have seen as a child too).
In fact I worry about it with my own son now, I don't think he'll be able to tell the difference between his own memories and things he has seen in 1000s of pictures and videos I have been taking since he was born.
> Because I know I am definitely guilty of that, I can swear I remember bits from my family's trip to Pompeii when I Was 2 years old, not much but little bits here and there, and only when I was older I noticed that what I remember is suspiciously similar to what my mum has in the family album from that trip(which I most likely would have seen as a child too).
Maybe in a sense, both are true? When you saw the photos as a child, you did remember them then, but that's what reinforced those memories enough that you now remember them?
Similar to 'remembering that you remembered X', even though you don't directly remember X now.
I'm the opposite. I started making memories very late - I have only the vaguest memories of primary school. I think I formed long-term memories at around 10 years old.
Other commenters are trying to gaslight you into believing this isn't possible, but I also have a memory from before I could walk.
I was lying on the floor, contemplating a toy that had been hung above my head, when someone who was not one of my parents came to pick me up.
Years later, I told my mother about this. She then searched through the family film archive, and found the moment in question. The person who picked me up was my uncle.
This was not a film we had watched before, it came about because I was discussing with my mother our earliest memories.
You have one memory of all the time before you could walk, and it just so happens to have been caught on film? You don't find that suspicious?
No I do not. Years of my early life are on film. My parents were enamored with their camera, it was frequently set up to film the entire room, passively.
When I say my mother searched for the moment, I mean she searched through tapes that had never been viewed from her archives.
I normally try to live my life in the spirit of XKCD 386, but I leave this response for the sake of clarification, to not discourage any future readers.
Seems farfetched to believe that you happened to have the exact moment you discuss on video
Haha yeah, I am used to the skepticism.. I've thought about this a lot. There are so many things I've confirmed that aren't in photographs or stories I've been told that it seems to be real.
I also have aphantasia, I have wondered if my lack of visualization has somehow empowered my long-term memory. I rely on memory for "visualizing" things.