I have to contradict this with my own anecdotal experience. Like I said in my above post, I’ve been getting the “emerging hidden memory” experience a lot lately. None of these memories are emotionally charged. Rather, they are mundane and pleasant recollections associated with a book, character, or toy that I had forgotten since my preschool days. Perhaps we all have these memories, but most people never recall them because they do not have the opportunity to come into contact with the trigger.
Hmm…based on that, do you think the answer to calirobscur’s question: “If the appropriate trigger was presented to me, would I suddenly remember what I had for dinner on september 17 1989, for instance?”, is yes?
Perhaps. He might not recognize that the incident he is recalling is September 17, 1989, but something may trigger a memory of eating roast beef and peas for dinner as a child.
There is the case of the woman who remembers everything about her own life. Her experience raises the question of how she is different from the rest of us. Does she have an amazing hyper-memory that allows her to recall every detail of her life, or does she lack the ability to bury memories? Perhaps normal people also have the mental capacity to remember all the events that they experience, but to retain sanity and organization, the brain stores away unnecessary memories.
Earliest memory I can date with specificity: the ride to the hospital to see my new baby brother. Two years, seven 1/2 months.
From around the same period, I remember sitting in my high chair and eating from my compartmentalized plastic plate. It had decal cartoon drawings of African wild animals on it. The largest food well had, I think two hippos against a background of green and blue circles. Rather psychedelic, actually. 
Much later than that, from around and shortly after turning 4, I really remember the Miami Dolphins’ run to the Super Bowl in 1972, their perfect [17-0] season. I remember the things my Dad yelled at the TV set, like “Go, Merc’, go, Merc’, GO, MERC’… You got it!,”* “Griese, what the hell were you thinking?!?”** and “Garo, what the hell were you thinking?!?” – which may well have been from the Super Bowl game in January, 1973, when the punter Garo Yepremian famously almost blew the whole game.
- Mercury Morris.
** Bob Griese, QB, natch. Although he was injured early in the season and Earl Morrall did most of the QBing that year, Griese did play the S.B. game.
Though I would think that what you need for intellectual development is procedural and working memory, not so much episodic memory.
Indeed, in my case, episodic memory is quite scant, and always has been (I have but scattered memories of anything that happened more than a few years ago) but my early intellectual development was pretty strong.
-FrL-
My first memory was when my sister was born i would have been 2 1/2 at the time. I know its a real memeory and not one i think i remember because i asked my grandma once if i was sitting on a chair with her at the hospital and she said yea and no one had ever told me that
My earliest memory is of being in my crib one morning, standing up, feeling in a good mood, and talking to myself while waiting for my parents to come get me. I have no idea how old I would have been because I don’t know what age I went from crib to bed, but probably around 2.
I also had a memory of sitting on my grandpa’s lap and being nervous because I didn’t really know who he was since it must have been the first time he visited (he didn’t visit often). So I had one of those Little People toys, and I kept playing with it and sticking it on my finger, nervously, because I didn’t know this guy. Later, as an adult, I saw a photo from this day and there I am on my grandpa’s lap with the Little People in my hands (it was a black and white bulldog - I remember that too!). In the photo I look to be about 3. I still get a bit nervous like that when I am around people I don’t know!!
I think it’s interesting what imprints. The first memory I have is of the summer of 1967. So I just turned three. I remember being put on a boat. And I was so scared, today I still remember the FEAR so strong, much more than the visual.
I also remember that boat was at a cabin we stayed at and the cabin had an outhouse. I remember looking at it and thinking “That’s is just SO wrong.”
But then I don’t remember much for another year.
Memory is funny, 'cause my first language was Serbo-Croatian, and I remember my mum saying “OK Mark, from now on ENGLISH ONLY.” I also remember other things, like a neighbor who didn’t speak English, but I remember all this as HAPPENING in English.
So I am fully aware memory can be faulty. Cause I didn’t speak English at the time. Perhaps the memory is twisted up because by the time I was in first grade, I no longer could understand Serbo-Croatian well. After like I was like age seven I was lost.
So I am thinking I replaced the Serbo-Croatian with English.
I have memories associated with the apartment we lived in when I was born. Until recently I thought we had moved from there when I was at least a year old, but my aunt informed me that I was 9 months old when we moved. So my earliest memories predate 9 months of age. And they are some very specific memories, associated with that specific location, to which we had never returned.
My earliest memory is the birth of my brother, I was 2 years 11 months old at the time. I don’t possess anything before that time.
My family moved from Hawaii to SC when I was two years and nine months old. I remembered the stone wall and clothesline in the back yard of the house in Hawaii, and I remembered who was sitting where on one of the plane rides to the East Coast. There were no known photos of the wall/clotheline, so that memory formed and was retained before 2 3/4 years. The plane situation COULD have been backfilled by stories (everyone got sick, including the cat under the seat).
Both my wife and my best friend were born prematurely. They both insist that they have memories of the incubator, no matter how much I insist that it’s impossible.
I have a small set of three or four distinct memories from when I was about 18 months old (summer 1950), which were confirmed and positively dated by my family before they passed on.
[ul][li]There was a small concrete patio just outside the back door of our home, with a small wooden table on it flanking the steps down to it. I recall clearly my aunt bathing her dog “Chubby” while I was standing with my father’s dog “Gypsy” watching her. Both dogs were elderly at the time, and one died and the other became ill and required being euthanized later that summer, so that one can be confirmed as to date.[/li][li]My father’s cousin Wallace owned a working dairy farm, inherited from his father. In addition to the main farmhouse, it included a smaller cottage-style house which in the past had been the residence for a hired hand but was then occupied by his widowed mother, my (great-)Aunt Hattie, and her spinster sister, my Aunt Gracia. Aunt Hattie died the following winter, and Aunt Gracia went into a nursing home soon thereafter. I can remember sitting in a hammock in their side yard, being held by an elderly lady whom I’m pretty sure was Aunt Hattie.[/li][li]On the same visit, I was shown the large draft horse which they still used for plowing. Big horse, and I was a very small boy. The effect on me was about equivalent to imagine yourself today standing alongside a sauropod dinosaur. (They did have tractors but continued to use the horse for some reason for a few years.)[/li]My grandmother bathing me in a large washbasin in our bathroom, and telling me something very important. (I have no idea what, but I remember her serious demeanor.) That washbasin continued in use until my father remodeled in the early 1970s, so I’m familiar with its size – it would hold a small toddler sitting, but just barely.[/ul]
I also have horrible episodic memory. I often completely forget recent events that I take part in, but I always file away “facts”… political developments, scientific breakthroughs, news headlines, things of that nature. I also have great recall of meaningless trivia that I have learned throughout my life, since I was very young, but the things that actually happened to me I don’t remember. This occasionally gets me into a bit of trouble with my wife 
My first memory I can date (roughly) must’ve happened when I was 2. I was with my mother and grandmother on the tennis courts at the elementary school. (My grandmother worked there most of her life.) My mother asked me if I wanted a brother. He was born a week before my third birthday so I’d say I was probably about 2 1/2. I believe I forgot about it until I started going to school and saw the tennis courts again and remembered it. Being 6, I thought when she asked me if I wanted a brother, it meant she was going to go out and get one (and I couldn’t remember her being pregnant), so I told my brother he was adopted.
I can remember a bunch of other times before I started kindergarten, some of which I believe may have been before my brother was born, but they’re all totally obscure things so I can’t date them. I remember a bunch of dreams too.