# Baby memories: trick of the mind? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 26, 2004, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baby-memories-trick-of-the-mind/226195 "2004-01-26T18:46:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baby-memories-trick-of-the-mind/226195/21 "2004-01-27T18:21:46Z")
I’m sorry that a few anectodal stories convinces you, perhaps you should read [this article](http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/messingwithyourmind/index.html), and do a google search on the topic- there is a wealth of information and it is supported by a multitude of studies. In fact people can unknowningly create false memories, in the article mentioned above, they mention this: > [@](#): > > One of her students provided his fourteen-year-old brother, Chris, with one-paragraph written descriptions of four childhood events, one of which was false. (The false event was that Chris had been lost in a shopping mall when he was five.) Over the next five days, Chris wrote about whatever details he could remember from all four events, adding details to his “memories.” > > A few weeks later, Chris was asked to describe each event and rate the clarity of each memory on a scale of one (not clear at all) to eleven (very, very clear). The shopping mall memory got his second-highest rating, number eight. He could describe being lost in detail. > > Finally, Chris was told that one of his memories was false. When asked which one he thought it was, he chose one of the real memories. When told that the shopping mall memory was fabricated, he had a hard time believing it. There is a wealth of information out there, countless books, many studies, and strong arguments for these theories, dismissing it as bunk just because a few people say they have memories at a young age on a message board is pretty un-SDMB. For shame. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baby-memories-trick-of-the-mind/226195/22 "2004-01-27T21:26:58Z")
**Eats\_Crayons** : > [@](#): > > I have very clear memories from infancy - it creeps out my mom sometimes. > > Eg/ I remember my mom changing my diaper on the floor of the living room. It was a cloth diaper. She pricked her thumb with the pin, yelped, and told my father to go get a band-aid… > > The interesting thing about the memories I have from that age is that they are devoid of language… in my memory of that little scene, I have no memory of language, I remember the voices, but no words . You did not know “diaper” or “living room” or “mom” or “dad” or “thumb” or “band-aid”? So all you remember about them is what they looked like or felt like, etc? And you can remember those experiences so well, so vividly, that you can, in retrospect, identify those items as “Oh, well that was a diaper, and that pattern of backdrop colors and shapes was the living room, and oh, I see, she was making that sound because that was a pin and she’d jabbed it into her thumb, and that was my Dad of course and that was a band-aid…” – ?? More likely you had more language going for you than you think. You may not have known enough words to follow the conversation and still had enough to encode “that’s mom” and “that’s dad” and “I know this room-place, _that_room” and also probably something that meant “diaper” to you. I’ve got my doubts about you comprehending the pin or the band-aid at the time, but if you had enough other memories you could think _about_, you might have recalled the appearance and behaviors and figured out what had been happening when you thought on it a few years later on. **ftg** : > [@](#): > > Infantile amnesia is bunk. Some people are just better at remembering than others, regardless of age. …memories before age 2 can be retained. My earliest datable one is an illness when I was 18-20 months old. Again, you probably had more of a vocabulary than you’re giving yourself credit for. Babies are not without language up until the moment they start speaking in words themselves, after all! I should also add that there’s some evidence that at least some infants develop their own home-brewed language which they can use to stand for experiences and concepts. I seem to recall some sets of twins in which such proto-languages were even shared and persisted into early childhood. Mostly, of course, kids pick up the language used by their family instead. My point is that a language is there, and therefore that memories can consist of the baby’s description of self of what just happened, and therefore think _about_ past events. Memory, especially long-term memory, is just too hard to make sense out of without having interpretations and concepts and the narrative of “thoughts that went with the experience” to go with the recall of what your five senses were telling you and how you felt about it. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baby-memories-trick-of-the-mind/226195/23 "2004-01-27T22:32:47Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > There is a wealth of information out there, countless books, many studies, and strong arguments for these theories, dismissing it as bunk just because a few people say they have memories at a young age on a message board is pretty un-SDMB. For shame. I’m curious. Are you saying that toddler memories (Say age 2-4) can’t happen? Not only do I remember these things, I remember the experiences, and I remember remembering them, before I knew this was something remarkable. I also learned to read at a very early age (2 1/2) so I wonder if that has anything to do with the process. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baby-memories-trick-of-the-mind/226195/24 "2004-01-28T02:41:53Z")
Oh my, certainly not, it would be pretty silly to say babies don’t form memories at birth, let alone at age 2 and 4. How reliable a person’s memory of an age certainly is an issue though, especially one that is 20-40 years in the past. (depending on ones age) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baby-memories-trick-of-the-mind/226195.md?page=1)