When do we start to remember?

i think we start early on becuase i know people that remember certain bits of info from as early as 3 or 4. i can honestly remember things around that age as well. not complete memories but smells and sights cause memories to pop up. i think the brain pushes these memories deep in our minds becuase they arnt necessary. my theory is that a hypnotist could bring them out again. idk…just guessin here.

Some psychologists think that the “memories” you have from before the age of 5 are very likely factitious.

@pdworkin thats kinda freaky when you think about it.

It happens the minute we stop trying to forget…or when the booze runs out.

Memory is a plastic thing. The more we learn about it, the less reliable it seems to be. Eyewitness testimony is perhaps the worst possible trial evidence, for instance.

this is interesting to me because ever since I was like 15 or so I’ve had the memory of a goldfish… I’ll walk into a room to do something and forget why I went there to begin with… I cannot remember what I ate for lunch yesterday or what I did this weekend, but I can remember everything about an event that happened years earlier.

I know I remember stuff from when I was 3 and there are a few memories that I have that is earlier than that. I’m guess that it depends on the person.

@goose756 When my daughter was about 5 or so, she was with me in the attic when I found that moths had eaten the lining of my favorite lorry-driver’s coat. I showed her the holes, and told her that moths had done it. Apparently, she thought I had said that a mouse had done it.

She is now 28 years old and swears that she remembers a little mouse chewing on the lining of my coat! She saw it with her own eyes! I cannot convince her by any means that this is a facticious memory.

I’m a bit depressed right now. I was looking at the answers to my first question and fear that I may only remember times before today as the good old days.

I personally have memories going back to about 3 years old. I think before that time you brain is still in the building process and memories get over written because your brain has not had enough time to organize. The brain is not only hardware and operating system it also has self-organizing software. At the initial upload there are bound to be a few mistakes and writing errors. For some the damage is permanent, therefore they have emotional, personality, and cognitive problems. We are lucky that most of us make it through the process.

I can still remember some of those that happened when i was 3.Maybe because i fell asleep while i was hiding during a hide and seek game with neighbors.

My earliest memory is of being in my pram – remember it was snowing and the pram being jolted as it was jolted going down steep steps. Just flashes, but definite memories.

My memories from 3–6 are occasional snapshots. They became videos after that.

I have memories from before 5yrs old that my grandparents are surprised and amused by, they verify most of them so I don’t think it’s all made up or distorted over time unless I’ve got several other people deluded along with me.

@hungryhungryhortence That’s not usually how it works. Usually you have been told these things by the same people who then later verify them.

I have 2 very vivid memories from under age 5 that are clear in my mind. One is spilling my drink and running to my mom to hide from from dad. He found me and hit me anyway. Another is being so sick that I vomited in bed and my dad got mad and yelled at me. Huh. A theme. These stories have been corroborated by my mother. I asked her about them.

My earliest memories

Getting onto the school bus while wearing my Strawberry Shortcake bikini (Kindergarten). My Mom was chatting on the phone that morning (probably talking to one of her sisters), and I went up to her and asked her if it was a school day. When I asked her that, whoever she was talking to she said “No” to them. I thought that she was answering my question, so, off I went to put on my bikini. I went out into the front yard and was doing some cartwheels when up pulled the school bus. The bus driver opened the door and I got on, donning only a bikini (no shoes).

I guess that my Mom soon realized that I was gone. She got a call from the school a bit later and they told her that I was at school, and that she’d have to come in with a change of clothes.

Going down a wooden slide while I was in JK and getting huge sliver. (odd that I remember that)

Age 5 – our cat had her litter of kittens in my bedroom closet. That was the spot that she picked. I remember look over whilst in bed and seeing her in the closet with her kitties. I also remember picking one up and letting walk across my face, feeling it’s tiny little nails on my cheek (odd that I remember that, as well).

@pdworkin: Some of things I remember are things the other people would have rather I not or they weren’t aware I had knowledge of.

Everything before age 10 or so is just a series of “snapshots”, usually of bad things happening, but occaisionally random things. My fathers ‘56 Packard (had to take off my shoes and sit on a towel to ride in it). The funny color TV where faces would be green or purple, but never right. The huge shortwave radio that my mother and I would listen to French and German broadcasts. The silly movies we had to watch in school about what do do when the commies dropped the bomb (duck and cover). Getting punished for things when I had no idea what I had done wrong. Hiding from other kids so I could read in peace.

@hungryhungryhortence I believe you. Certain memories are very, very real, certain memories are demonstrably false, and certain memories are somewhere in between.

My memories of the day my brother died when I was 4 are a visual collage of things that probably did happen on that day and things (like my mother being in a bathrobe) that probably happened in the succeeding months. There are things I can picture, like the blanket they brought him to the hospital in, that could not have been told to me. That event is probably my earliest and most vivid memory but looking at it intellectually, I realize that much of it is jumbled in my mind.

When I was about 2 or 3, I pulled a pot of boiling porridge over my right arm, my parents say. I don’t remember the event, but I do remember being in my crib, next to my parents’ bed and it was night, and I was crying with the pain in my arm and hand. One of the scars is still on my hand. That is my earliest memory.

Wikipedia tells me the average age of first memories is three years, six months with a great deal of variation between individuals.

I would imagine that these first “real” memories are not qualitatively different from the earlier memories that are not stored. Instead, they’re probably juuuust strong enough to make it into long-term storage with enough fidelity to be recalled and reported laer.

It’s not like you get to a point in your life when suddenly you remember everything. Even adult memories are graded—there are some things you remember flawlessly, and some things you… vaguely… feel… might be… familiar? So I would bet that in childhood, you need a MUCH stronger stimulus to commit the memory to long-term storage, and as you age, the strength threshold gradually decreases.

I remember things from when I was 2 and my dad and I lived at my grandparents’. One memory out of these may be a product of a series of photos taken on that date and time, but everything else, I’m 100% positive they’re real.

For my wife, it was 2 years old. she tells me she remembers her dad taking her downtown to the annual Christmas Parade and sitting her on top of his shoulders for a better view. for me, it was about the age of 5. i threw a rock at a basketball and the rock bounced back and broke my front tooth.

@nikipedia – you need a MUCH stronger stimulus: so a very bad pain, like that of my burn, would be remembered, but not the circumstances.

@bea2345: Maybe. The way adult memories work, the stronger the stimulus is, the more likely you are to remember it. In that case, you probably will remember the circumstances and details very well. These kinds of memories tend to be a strong, detailed, and long-lasting.

…or so we think. Usually, when we remember strongly emotional memories we feel very strongly that they’re accurate, even when they’re, well, not.

I’m guessing that these early childhood memories work the same way. The stronger the stimulus, the more enduring the memory. Maybe only the burn itself was strong enough to be “burned” (ha, ha) into your memory.

babies remember how to walk and crawl and hold their bottle and what to do with theri favorite toys…

maybe it’s that we don’t start to remember things in chronological order until round age 2 and we don’t master the technique until around 7 or 8??? i dunno..

I… can’t… recall.

I have a few memories from when I must have been about 2 years old. That is the earliest I can go back.

@pdworkin While facticious is a word, I believe the word you were seeking was fictitious.
Would you clarify that for me?.

The development of articulate use of language play an important role in the encoding of experiences, events, and sensations into memories we can later retrieve and reexamine. The development of internal use of language various with richness of the verbal environment and raw intellectual development. These vary with age.

Created by humans, artificial; Counterfeit, fabricated
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Factitiousness

I generally say what I mean to say.

I can’t recall what I had for dinner last night.

This might be what is contributing to my weight gain: I can’t recall if I even had dinner tonight.

Excuse me; supper’s ready. (Again?)

I remember a brief event from when I was ~1 or so, scooting around in a baby walker thing and playing with attachments on the walker. It’s been verified that I had the baby walker described and the room I did a lot of my rolling in existed. There’s also been studies of people who remember the vast majority of their pasts. I’m sure there’s a spectrum of “memorial” abilities.

Both my sons and my Grandson say they don’t remember anything before they were around 15. I don’t know if they mean nothing, or just random stuff. I remember random stuff, but very little. My Dad was a photographer, and I don’t remember most of the events in the photos I see.

wow, that is an interesting question. as for me, my first ever memory was when we moved from another city, right about when i was more or less one. i remember walking through the front door with the house cold and barren. and then the phone (line by the previous owners) rang and i ran to it because i loved the sound of it so much. it was like magic. lol.