Babies form memories, but forget quickly
Walt Jabsco says his earliest memory is being in this pram, pulling daisies apart.
What’s your earliest memory? When we asked that question in the Earth & Sky office, everyone wanted to share their story.
Patricia Bauer – a professor and co–chair in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University – wants to know when infants start to form memories, and how their memories are different from the memories of adults.
Is it possible, she asks, for an adult to remember learning to crawl or even being born?
Listen, as Earth & Sky’s Jorge Salazar interviews Bauer at the 2007 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
And tell us … what’s your earliest memory?
I remember laying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, watching a large spider walk across the ceiling. My mother was in the room, probably folding clothes, but I was too young to bring her attention to the spider. I think that I was even too young to crawl to her, or off the bed.
About 9 – 10 months old, tops, confirmable by my actions, my mom’s verification, and old pictures of how the furniture had been positioned in the room.
She had laid me down for a nap in my crib. I wanted to see where she’d gone, but the bedroom door was half closed and I couldn’t see more than a sliver of the mysterious dark hallway. I managed to stand up on the mattress (with difficulty – it was so wobbly!) but I wasn’t tall enough to lean my head out far enough over the top rail to see more of that hallway, so I (reluctantly) sat back down and tried every which way to put my head between the bars. That didn’t work, so I struggled back up and tried peering over the top rail again. I was convinced if I could just stretch hard enough I’d see more – it was like an experiment in angles, utterly fascinating. Finally I called to her (well, it felt like sentient calling to me, though it was probably just increasingly loud cries) and she came! BUT — although at first she looked at me with a sort of astonished delight (she said things I didn’t understand, but I got the cooing tone and the smiles), she then picked me up… and simply LAID ME BACK DOWN! All my hard work – undone – and so easily!!! I was outraged!!!
Seems like all my early memories got anchored by strong emotion (especially negative ones… oops), but that was definitely the first and it maintains immediacy, with the richest, clearest details.
The earliest memory I have is being on my mom’s shoulder and my father coming in to get us. I have one more snatch of memory from that time,being in the car and seeing a large building in the distance through the car window. My mom tells me I was only 1 year old very sick at the time. This is just one of many snatches of memory that I have from that general time frame.
Rob Shaw
It’s very hard for me at age 50 to distinguish between, a)what I have heard from family members, b)what I have seen in early photos, and c) what I know as a true memory. My true memory of childhood doesn’t kick in until the kindergarten years. I can clearly see the classroom in my mind. I do not recall faces or people though. I specifically recall playing with odd shaped wood blocks with which I was enamored. To this day I still work with wood. I believe I am a child deep inside only trying to act as an adult.
I remember very vividly what the wall in the basement looked like as I rode my rocking horse in the house we lived in before I was 2; I also have several memories during the summer just after I turned 2 which are visual/emotional memories without many words attached. They are experiences I had, which no one else would have known to tell me about and nor are there pictures to support them.
As a Mom, I was very intrigued when my oldest daughter said things at the age of 15 months which make me believe she remembered being in utero. I taught childbirth classes (though never at our house) and had a book out on the table with an actual picture of a baby in utero on the front cover. She asked what it was, I told her it was a baby in it’s Mama’s tummy. She said “warm” I said “yes it is warm”. She said “dark” I said “yes it is dark” then she said “wet” I said, “yes it is wet”. I was amazed but she went back to playing.