40% Of 'First Memories' Are 'Made Up'

[maximus otter]

Two fifths of people have a fictional first memory based on fragments of early experiences, psychologists have found.

Scientists questioned participants in a survey that identified more than 2,000 individuals claiming to have memories from the age of two or younger.

Current research suggests that memories cannot be formed before about three-and-a-half years.

Yet 893 of those taking part in the survey said they had memories extending to before their first birthday.

The researchers studied the content, language, nature and descriptive detail of the early memory descriptions.

They found that the memories were fictional patchworks based on fragments of early remembered experiences combined with facts derived from photos and family conversations.

Professor Martin Conway, one of the scientists from City, University of London, said: “In our study we asked people to recall the very first memory that they actually remembered, asking them to be sure that it wasn’t related to a family story or photograph.

“When we looked through the responses from participants we found that a lot of these first ‘memories’ were frequently related to infancy, and a typical example would be a memory based around a pram.

“For this person, this type of memory could have resulted from someone saying something like ‘mother had a large green pram’. The person then imagines what it would have looked like. Over time these fragments then become a memory and often the person will start to add things in such as a string of toys along the top.

“Crucially, the person remembering them doesn’t know this is fictional. In fact when people are told that their memories are false they often don’t believe it.”

The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggested that 40% of people had fictional first memories.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/break...ries-that-are-made-up-study-finds-855965.html

maximus otter

 

[EnolaGaia]

This article's publication particulars:

Fictional First Memories
Shazia Akhtar, Lucy V. Justice, Catriona M. Morrison, and Martin A. Conway
Psychological Science
First Published July 17, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618778831

The review manuscript of the article can currently be accessed at:

http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33400/1/PubSub10917_Justice.pdf

... and here's the abstract:

In a large-scale survey, 6,641 respondents provided descriptions of their first memory and their age when they encoded that memory, and they completed various memory judgments and ratings. In good agreement with many other studies, where mean age at encoding of earliest memories is usually found to fall somewhere in the first half of the 3rd year of life, the mean age at encoding here was 3.2 years. The established view is that the distribution around mean age at encoding is truncated, with very few or no memories dating to the preverbal period, that is, below about 2 years of age. However, we found that 2,487 first memories (nearly 40% of the entire sample) dated to an age at encoding of 2 years and younger, with 893 dating to 1 year and younger. We discuss how such improbable, fictional first memories could have arisen and contrast them with more probable first memories, those with an age at encoding of 3 years and older.

 

[Xanatic*]

My earliest memory is laying on my back, wrapped in a blanket in a pram or similar. There were two people dressed in weird clothing leaning over me, mumbling something about "yellow sun" and "powers". Then there was a loud rumbling sound.

 

[GNC]

My earliest memory is laying on my back, wrapped in a blanket in a pram or similar. There were two people dressed in weird clothing leaning over me, mumbling something about "yellow sun" and "powers". Then there was a loud rumbling sound.

That's super, man.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Having now read the manuscript multiple times, I have to say this research paper is something of an ill-defined and sloppy mess.

The sole point clearly evident in the exposition is to defend earlier research interpretations to the effect that a valid autobiographical memory (whatever the **** these authors take that to denote ... ) cannot be generated prior to circa age 3.5.

These authors completely overlook the possibility that earlier memories may be subjectively inaccessible (in full 'autobiographical' richness ... ) until some later developmental threshold is reached, at which point they get integrated. Instead, they simply relegate those earlier, fragmentary, items to semi-mythic status and blame the older respondents for using the fragments to gloss their subjective personal narratives.

Even though they give lip service to differentiating between 'false' memories and the ones they dub 'fictional' for their purposes here, their choice of 'fictional' for the latter subset is one of the most brain-dead lexical gambits I've ever seen in a scientific paper.

They managed to characterize up to 40% of the pesky pre-age-three memories as 'fictional' by (perhaps unwittingly) rigging their data collection and analysis in several ways:

- relying on an open Internet survey with no controls over respondents or their inputs;
- extensively filtering out inputs that were judged unworthy of further consideration;
- basing much of this filtering on a face value lexical / linguistic analysis of the respondents' text inputs (i.e., filtering based on the textual features rather than the content);
- explicitly prohibiting any responses 'related to' a family narrative or photograph; and
- further eradicating a few hundred responses that seemed to allude to family narratives and / or photographs.

It seems to me the data hinted at something more nuanced, and possibly something more theoretically innovative, than the prevailing beliefs about early memories. These authors apparently chose to retreat from proposing any such novelties and to cull the data to eliminate the most pesky results and then sink them as being merely 'fictional'.

 

[Moth In Relay]

These authors apparently chose to retreat from proposing any such novelties and to cull the data to eliminate the most pesky results and then sink them as being merely 'fictional'.

Indeed.

This seems a very flimsy paper for such an interesting data set. I'm happy to bet that this thread will be updated in the future with a follow-on paper, by a braver researcher, who finds some gold in the damned data. (Maybe there's something about the memories of older, radio 4 listening people, rather than the usual undergrad cohort? The paper nearly addresses this but then gets all handwavy.)

Plus it bothers me that 'fictional' here basically means 'doesn't fit the theory'. The theoretically more orthodox memories could be equally 'fictional' too, as there is no validation of these memories in the study.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... This seems a very flimsy paper for such an interesting data set.

Well put ... One of the most striking features of the paper is its focus on the data in isolation, with little substantive discussion of the concepts or context within which that data is reviewed and conclusions drawn.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I'm happy to bet that this thread will be updated in the future with a follow-on paper, by a braver researcher, who finds some gold in the damned data. (Maybe there's something about the memories of older, radio 4 listening people, rather than the usual undergrad cohort? The paper nearly addresses this but then gets all handwavy.)

The questionnaire and other supporting materials were not included in the review manuscript, so I can't tell whether, or to what extent, the front end data collection features may have had the effect of rendering the data set useless for a subsequent review / reappraisal.

I admit to already holding a bias in the form of suspicion the front-end questionnaire (etc.) was itself framed in such a way as to bias the respondents' inputs, and hence the results.

It's also unclear whether the data set (once chewed up and diminished by deletions) could be reconstituted to support a fair second pass at the inputs received.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Plus it bothers me that 'fictional' here basically means 'doesn't fit the theory'. The theoretically more orthodox memories could be equally 'fictional' too, as there is no validation of these memories in the study.

The authors never get around to offering a definition for what the 'fictional' attribution is supposed to mean, encompass, or exclude. They do bother to mention it doesn't necessarily mean 'false' (vis a vis truth value / accuracy), but they don't bother to state what it does mean.

This, combined with their pejorative choice of 'fictional' as a label, is practically guaranteed to fake off casual readers into believing this study demonstrates such atypically early memories aren't worth trusting at all.

They even addressed the pesky data in a manner that belies dogged adherence to both (a) their fellow academics' current consensus and (b) the notion that aggregate statistics illuminate subjective matters, by labeling the outliers as 'improbably early' rather than (e.g.) 'unusually / atypically early'.

 

[Moth In Relay]

I admit to already holding a bias in the form of suspicion the front-end questionnaire (etc.) was itself framed in such a way as to bias the respondents' inputs, and hence the results.

I'm wondering, too, about the memory information contained in the radio program that advertised for respondents, and the memory website that respondents were sent to, according to page 6.

Something certainly seems to created an unexpected set of results, which presumably are out of line with norms for this sort of study, as otherwise the results wouldn't "pose a major conundrum" (p.12) or "astonishingly" 13.9% dating to one year or younger (p13).

 

[Iris]

Maybe it was just the respondents who were in this group.
As I've written before my earliest memory was of my mother complaining I'd bitten her whilst she was breastfeeding and that was well before I was 15 months and went searching for the photo of my Father.

 

[Yithian]

My earliest 'memories' are not what I think of as memories, but rather 'impressions'. They are of objects and patterns and colours that were repeatedly present and no doubt composites, but are these any less genuine than 'interrogable' memories?

I'm only able to date them--to age three or earlier--because they are of my first home and we moved away from that when I was three and a half.

My mother has one clear memory from around eighteen months, but, again, it's more of a location. It strikes me that these are the minds 'first attempts'.

 

[Eponastill]

All memories are kind of made up though aren't they. You experience something but anyone else there would have experienced something else. And as you recall your memory you tidy it up, or add to it to make it part of a narrative, or something? Maybe impressions of colours and smells and so on are less fiddleable with?

Anyway I can barely remember what I did yesterday let alone when I was a toddler.

 

[EnolaGaia]

My earliest 'memories' are not what I think of as memories, but rather 'impressions'. They are of object and patterns and colours that were repeatedly present and no doubt composites, but are these any less genuine than 'interrogable' memories? ...

That's the question I find oddly overlooked in the study at issue here. The authors are so hell-bent on validating the status quo they don't address the obvious angle that 'improbably' earliest memories illustrate that memory is capable of 'recording' earlier than it can reliably 'play back'.

They seem strangely resistant to accepting such earlier-than-predicted memories as valid in some sense, so they label them 'fictional' and thereby discount them as something separate and somehow lesser.

... It strikes me that these are the minds 'first attempts'.

Agreed ... I think the age 3 (plus or minus) threshold represents the point at which:

(a) episodic memories of historical scenes / scenarios can be formed;
(b) those memories consist of entire mini-narratives / story lines (as contrasted with isolated and relatively static impressions / snapshots); and ...
(c) these fully fleshed-out memories can be recalled / retrieved.

 

[EnolaGaia]

All memories are kind of made up though aren't they.

There's an important distinction to be drawn between:

(a) 'made up' in the sense of 'constructing' or 'parsing' experience into some sort of persistent mnemonic 'record'; and
(b) 'made up' in the sense of 'fabricated' (i.e., created from scratch; invented out of thin air).

I would put it this way ... All memories are 'constructed' per sense (a). It is not the case that all memories are 'fabricated' per sense (b), even though memories can be formed of scenes / scenarios / 'things' originating in (e.g.) one's own imagination rather than interactive experience with the wider world.

You experience something but anyone else there would have experienced something else.

Yes ... Insofar as each individual observer has to independently 'construct' his / her memories (per sense (a) above), there's no guarantee any two observers will totally agree on what they observed. At the extreme, they may have completely distinct - even disparate - interpretations of what happened.

 

[EnolaGaia]

And as you recall your memory you tidy it up, or add to it to make it part of a narrative, or something? Maybe impressions of colours and smells and so on are less fiddleable with? ...

The different sensory modalities don't all come fully 'online' (i.e., don't operate at their eventual level(s) of acuity and / or coordination) at the same time. The chemical senses (taste / smell) seem to ramp up the earliest and produce the most persistent (if fragmentary) memories. At the other extreme, vision takes a while to get its act together.

The ongoing integration of memories into a running narrative requires some capacity for semantics and abstraction, and this is most probably (IMHO) what typically coalesces or comes online circa age 3 - 3.5.

 

[Xanatic*]

Today my 4½ year old nephew commented on something from 2 years ago. So at least the memory has lasted so far.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

I think I can remember a few bits and bobs from my early childhood....but they could just be reconstructions from 41 years of seeing those old photos, hearing the same stories repeated....can I really remember those 1970s orange cupboard doors in the kitchen, or has my mind recreated the memory from seeing them in the background of old pics?

There's a tale about me when I was two or three....I turned-up at the back door with some sort of fungus stowed under the seat of my trike. It looked like someone had taken a big bite out of it, so off to hospital we went.

Apparently I was adamant that I hadn't eaten it - and everything was fine (obviously, unless I'm a ghost).

I'm still convinced that i didn't eat it. I KNOW I didn't.

But do I really remember that fact? Or have I just convinced myself over the years, slightly more sure with each retelling?

Maybe I did eat it and it was harmless, but thinking I'd be in trouble I denied everything, and now believe my 39 year old lie?

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's an example of the sort of follow-on distortion (of this study and its findings) that I feared would result ....

Your Earliest Memory Probably Never Happened
What is your first memory? A vivid scene may come to mind, seen from toddler eyes. Unfortunately, that scene may be a work of fiction, a new study finds. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63109-first-memory-fictional.html

This article takes the researchers' ill-advised label of 'fictional' literally and portrays the study's results as supporting the notion there can't be any autobiographical memories from before age 3 (+/-).

 

[henry]

we moved house on my third birthday, but not very far ... near enough that i sat on my dads shoulders as we walked over there

in the nineties at a car boot sale i glanced at an old babys cot, the mechanism to drop the side panel of the cot used small metal bars at either end of the panel, which sat in a routed channel like a upside-down J cut into the two corner uprights ... i knew instantly that i had had the same mechanism in my cot when a baby

i can literally only remember 5 or 6 other things from my childhood prior to age 10

 

[Iris]

My grandson has just turned 1 and he remembers exactly where the toys he has played with before are located when he visits.
He also remembers which things he has pulled apart the times before and goes straight to them and continues where he left off.
I don't know whether he will remember these things when he's older of course but he doesn't seem to forget things now.
Before he could walk I taught him to hold onto a chair's rungs to pull himself up and he went home and did the same thing.
Last weekend they went to a park with their friends and their 5 year old daughter who was climbing on the equipment so he copied her there.
When they came to our place he immediately started climbing on the coffee table near the tv so I will have to put the controllers up higher.

 

[henry]

My grandson has just turned 1 and he remembers exactly where the toys he has played with before are located when he visits.

a fantastic ex of mine told me this story ... one christmas at age about 4 or 5 (so long before i knew her !) she was given a brightly coloured ball as a christmas present, and immediately hid it somewhere in the house from where it could not be found, much to her annoyance, it just wasnt where she thought shed put it

exactly a year later, age 5 or 6, opening presents once more ... suddenly runs upstairs and returns with the ball !

 

[Iris]

I think little ones can remember a lot more than we give them credit for knowing.
One of my friends has a 3 year old grandson. He can already speak Spanish as well as English and when he was given a toy plastic guitar the other day immediately put it under his chin and said "Ah, violin".
They think maybe he saw one on the tv but no one can remember when.

 

[Gizmos Mama]

They seem strangely resistant to accepting such earlier-than-predicted memories as valid in some sense, so they label them 'fictional' and thereby discount them as something separate and somehow lesser.

I posted a story here that is an honest, full recall memory I have from before I was 1 year old.

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/scary-childhood-memory.59368/reply&quote=1557379

It irks me that these researchers would just completely disregard the possibility that myself (or others on that thread, or in the study) have a legitimate, verifiable memory because they think it has to be another way 100% of the time.

I remember details, the context of the situation, and individuals who were present. This not a "fictional" memory, built around family narratives, pictures and impressions.

Sloppy, biased and missing a huge opportunity to find out really interesting stuff about how memories are formed, as well as how the brain develops.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I posted a story here that is an honest, full recall memory I have from before I was 1 year old. ...

Same here ... In 2009 I posted a brief description of a demonstrably pre-age-1.5 memory in this thread:

earliest memories
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/earliest-memories.5908/
(post #94)

In this case I had mentioned the remembered scene / scenario / event (in detail) throughout my childhood, but my mother couldn't accept, recollect, or explain it until I positively identified my great-grandfather in a photo I didn't see until I was a teenager. Once that happened, she confirmed everything I'd been asking about for years. She'd previously assumed I couldn't possibly remember something that happened prior to age 1.5.

In that case, a family photo wasn't the source for any 'fictional' memory on my part - it was the eventual proof confirming my description and recollection of the event to my mother.

 

[Gizmos Mama]

And in my case, it was me asking my dad about it that reminded him about that incident, and not a case of it being a well told family story. And it was him telling me how young I was at the time of the incident, once he remembered, that kind of shocked us both!

There does seem to be a fairly large amount of anecdotal evidence to suggest at least some people do form "true", (i.e. not "fictional") memories earlier than the established convention believes possible, and they seemed to have blown their chances of possibly finding out why.

If I was doing this study, I'd probably be more interested in the data they threw out, as it seems like therein may lay the a way to find pattern, or more correctly, the outliers. Which could be a pretty significant breakthrough, it seems to this complete layman in regards to neurology research, or any kind of research, academic, medical or otherwise.

 

[henry]

One of my friends has a 3 year old grandson. He can already speak Spanish as well as English and when he was given a toy plastic guitar the other day immediately put it under his chin and said "Ah, violin".
They think maybe he saw one on the tv but no one can remember when.

surely language acquisition is different in nature to experiential memory

 

[Coal]

Fascinating thread. I scnaned that paper a bit back and more or less concluded the same as @EnolaGaia.

I've got an oddly well developed biographical memory that I put down to moving around a lot. Last year on the way back from dropping the eldest in Higher E. I pulled off the main road and drove unerringly to my first house, which we left in 1966. Mrs Coal, asked when I was last there. Er...1966. I can recall my brother having his nappy changed, so that's me under three, and my nursery school, it's location on the mostly defunct base and two years of infant school. So the nursery school was c. 1963/4. When I was three at most. For an encore I drove to the infant school three miles away, via several junctions and showed Mrs Coal my two class-rooms and the playground sycamore tree, the seeds of which fascinated me at the age of 4. I can do more...

 

[_Danforth_]

I have a few memories from a very young age but, like Yithian, they are more experiences/feelings than the sort of things I can remember from recent days.

Also have a very clear memory of flying/floating down the stairs in my childhood home, so huh, memories, what good are they anyway

I remember looking at the TV Times and realising it was two days until my birthday. And standing at a grandparent's house, holding her mechanical calendar (turn dials to move day/date/month. Brass and wood.) Those are both from when I was 3ish so juuust about inside the time when "reliable" memories start to form.

But I have one, and only one, earlier memory - in the back seat of a car, on a long journey, looking at a cloud my parents had pointed out as being baby-shaped and saying that was my sister, who would be born soon. My sister's name is Lucy and my parents started singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds... She's two years younger than me