Current research indicates that people’s earliest memories date from around three to three-and-a-half years of age. However, the study from researchers at City, University of London, the University of Bradford and Nottingham Trent University found that 38.6 per cent of a survey of 6,641 people claimed to have memories from two or younger, with 893 people claiming memories from one or younger. This was particularly prevalent among middle-aged and older adults.
City University London
One of my oldest memories is a vague recollection of attending the funeral of my maternal grandmother – except… she died well before I was even born! It’s probably one of these cases when my mother spoke about it so many times, that my mind started forming images around the story as if I were actually there.
Except for a couple fragments, I have a very poor memory of my childhood, so I generally assume the few events I recall are so distorted by the passage of time as to be completely unreliable.
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. This partly due to the fact that the systems that allow us to remember things are very complex, and it’s not until we’re five or six that we form adult-like memories due to the way that the brain develops and due to our maturing understanding of the world.
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