Memories can be precious things, giving us a sense of who we are and where we come from. However, research suggests that, for many of us, our first memories are no more than fiction.
Almost 40 per cent of people have fictional first memories, according to UK-based research released in 2018, with those middle-aged or older said to be more likely to succumb to this phenomenon.
Based on research that says our earliest memories are formed at three years of age, the study, conducted by City University of London, the University of Bradford and Nottingham Trent University, found that many claimed to have memories from an earlier age.
In a survey of 6,641 people, 38.6 per cent claimed to have memories from two years old and below, while 893 people claimed to remember experiences from the age of one or younger.
The researchers say that, instead of being actual memories, these recollections are made from fragments of early experience mixed with facts or knowledge about the person’s own childhood.
“We suggest that what a rememberer has in mind when recalling fictional improbably early memories is an episodic-memory-like mental representation,” says Dr Shazia Akhtar, first author and senior research associate at the University of Bradford.
The study prompted respondents to recall their first directly experienced memory, with many describing images of infancy – for example, looking up at their mother from the inside of a pram.
While many struggle to believe that memories such as these are fictional, Akhtar says that the complexity of the mind means that separating fact from fiction in our childhood memories can be difficult.
“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.”
Previous research into human memory has also suggested that, even as adults, we are susceptible to being “tricked” into making changes to our memories without realising it.
In a 1996 study by the University of Washington, “15 to 27 per cent of subjects said they remembered seeing items they had only read about” after reading a number of misleading articles. – dpa
