My theory is that memory is more about the stories that we tell and retell ourselves, than any sort of objective reflection of reality. If you're not refreshing the stuff in your cache, it ages out and goes away.
Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
31–40 of 77 posts
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#32I read recently that our memories are us recalling the last time we remembered it. They did a study which showed those that intoduced errors in their memories later recalled them as facts the next time. So my thought is that childhood amnesia could be down to children living in the moment and simply don't spend time recalling past events. Only later do we consider events as being past, present and future.
They absolutely do though. I only see my nieces and nephews a few times a year, and they always remind me of things we did the last time I visited.
That's sort of the point. You're seeing them giving them a reason to recall the memory. They will then carry those memories into adulthood.
My first memories are roughly when I was 3 years old. So recalling the first 2-3 years of my life is pretty much impossible. That also happens to be the age when I probably didn't communicate previous experiences to anyone else.
But lets face it, I actually have no clue on this topic, just trying to piece together what I've read about and my own understanding.
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#33The thing I find most interesting about childhood amnesia is that that, despite this headline, it's not that we don't form early memories. We do form them, and then as we get older we forget them again. If you ask a 5-year-old child, they will accurately remember things that happened to them when they were 2. Then they gradually forget, and at 11, the early memories are completely lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
I'd toss out an evolutionary argument that for the last million years memory is mostly useful for who owes what to who so we can play well known small tribe politics games...
Given that as a (possibly obvious?) starting point, a subgroup that remembered every time some a 2-year old kid stole their pet dinosaur from another 2-year old kid, would mostly result in senseless adult strife. So we're better off not remembering our childhood as we get older. Subgroups that forget childhood animosity will outperform subgroups with perfect, but useless, memories.
I'd even toss out the hypothesis that all relationships change at puberty so toss out all memories at puberty because its a whole nother ball game. However the same system that stores "how to hunt dinosaur" also stores "Little billy stole my toy dinosaur when I was 2-years old" so the erasure system optimizes at a certain relatively high level of forgetting stuff.
And yes I know my years are all made up and the non-overlapping relative timespans of dinos and humans so I wrote in a very general flippant sunday afternoon sense.
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#34I wonder what kind of effect today's technology has. I mean, my son is 3, and already has hours of videos stored. And he likes watching those videos of himself and family even now. How is this going to affect memory formation later in life? Should we hide those videos from him to avoid some kind of a feedback-loop that can somehow mess with his memory?
I participated in a study in college that tested something similar to this. If someone knows information is stored somewhere it is easier for them to remember the location of it, rather than the actual information. (Its easier to google a math formula's name than to remember the actual formula).
Really children now could 'remember' a whole lot more, and a lot clearer, if they just remember where the video is rather than the actual video.
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#35I wonder what kind of effect today's technology has. I mean, my son is 3, and already has hours of videos stored. And he likes watching those videos of himself and family even now. How is this going to affect memory formation later in life? Should we hide those videos from him to avoid some kind of a feedback-loop that can somehow mess with his memory?
I wonder the exact same thing, our boy is 2 and as soon as he could hold a phone his favourite videos were of himself. Going to be interesting "do you really remember X happening or is the video something that you rewatched so much you couldn't help but recall?"
We mostly recall only what we photograph. I'm conscious of this every time I take photos.
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#36I still have a few memories from when I was 2. Nothing from ages 1,3,4. I can actually recall things from every other year.
Including year/age 0?
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#37I have a memory of age one, bathing in a tin tub in the garden of father's boss. No language, but the impression that life can be good had such an impact that I remembered.
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#38Perhaps someone on HN has had a similar experience to me. I can "remember" my mother telling my father that she was pregnant with my little brother, which means I was less than 21 months old at the time. I have some specific details I've corroborated with my parents (like the fact that my mother put a sign in the driveway to surprise my father when he got home from work), which they were amazed that I knew.
But I realized a few years ago that the memory, despite having true elements and feeling legitimate, takes place in the wrong location: the house that we moved into shortly after he was born. So I'm sure at some point I either was told this story and confused it for a memory, or I held onto the "gist" of the original memory long enough and then recalled/rewrote it enough times that the setting was changed to the place where the majority of my childhood took place. But I find it amazing that I still feel like it's a real memory.
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#39I find this mystifying. I have numerous memories from being a toddler. Among friends' children, some have more fully-formed personalities than others. My favorite one has an excellent memory (like she remembers where things are in our house even though she only visits every 2 or 3 months) and also highly developed preferences on clothing (colors, acceptable combinations of what to wear etc.).
Re: Why does it take so long for us to form our first memory?
#40My theory is that memory is more about the stories that we tell and retell ourselves, than any sort of objective reflection of reality. If you're not refreshing the stuff in your cache, it ages out and goes away.
My understanding is that's correct - memories are reformed when you retrieve them. This is also how you can introduce errors in to your recall.