Aug 2, 2021 – Most people likely have more early childhood memories than they realize, and getting those early experiences is easy, according to Carole Peterson, MD, of Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns, Canada.
Most people have more memories of their preschool years than is generally believed, says Peterson, who has been studying amnesia in children – the total or relative lack of early memory – for more than 20 years.
“We had this model that there is a memory that is essentially the beginning, the watershed, the boundary, and that is the beginning of your event memory,” explains Peterson. But most people likely have more childhood memories than they currently remember and could go back even further, says Peterson, who recently reviewed research on early memory.
When asked to recall more memories, people often begin to realize for themselves and can even recall past events. In fact, Peterson’s research has shown that a person’s earliest memories, as confirmed by parents, often appeared a year earlier than reported, an average of two and a half years instead of three and a half years.
Memories from the age of two and a half
Mental errors with inaccurate perceptions of time are known as the telescopic effect and occur when people remember the time of an event differently from how it actually happened, explains Peterson.
“People develop a life story that gives their life meaning,” says Peterson. “It is who you are what you are. Your early events go down in this life story.”
If memories are an important part of how we feel about ourselves, understanding the memory is also important, she adds.
One of my earliest memories is that my father showed me pineapple grass that grows on the dry, gravelly back roads of the Northern Delta. To this day I enjoy picking and smelling it in summer. pic.twitter.com/a86Fr8iUCl
– Stephen Brown (@SpaceBurgrSteve) July 25, 2021
Memories – especially early ones – can not only help construct a life story, but can also be helpful when a criminal investigation is required.
“For example, when someone comes up as a teenager or an adult and talks about having been molested when they were 2 years old, a lot of the time now happens to the public: ‘Oh, it can’t be, people can … ‘can’t remember that age.’ So it’s not taken seriously, “explains Peterson.
“At the very least, such memories” should “be taken seriously enough to be investigated, seriously enough not to simply be dismissed completely,” she says.
And that’s starting to happen.
Until recently, reports from children under the age of 7 were often considered unreliable because it was not clear whether they could tell fact from fantasy. “Now children aged 3 and over are considered credible witnesses in court,” says Peterson.
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