Most likely, the first memories we have are fake The Quindío Chronicle

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British scientists have asked more than six thousand volunteers of different ages who spoke of their first memory and have discovered that almost 40% occurred before the age of 3. This, according to the authors of the book published in the journal Psychological Science, would mean that they are fictitious because & # 39; At this age the memories of episodic memory are not yet formed.

The ability to form autobiographical memories – memories stored in episodic and semantic memory – usually develops at the age of three or four years. In favor of this fact is that, for example, children who have experienced an interesting event before the age of 3 years are not able to reproduce it verbally.

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Memories before age three

However, in early memory studies, there is almost always a certain percentage of people who declare to remember events that happened to them before the three years Such memories are usually associated with important events: for example, the appearance of 39 a brother or sister. To investigate, Martin Conway, a psychologist at the University of London, decided to calculate the proportion of people who claim to have memories too early to form an autobiographical memory. Conway and his team, interviewed 6641 people

Usually, these studies involve young people or children: autobiographical memories are forgotten over time and the best way to get there early is to address the memory as soon as possible. This time the scientists decided to invite everyone to participate at any age – from 11 to 100 years – .

The participants made a small online survey, in which they were asked to describe in detail their oldest memory, then to say how old they were at that time

The researchers found that about 40% of respondents retained their first memory. from the age of two years, and 893 people reported remembering something that happened to them at the age of one year. The majority, 52%, of these incredibly early memories were associated with a cradle or stroller, and the rest with their parents or a sad event. In addition, at the age of 3 to 5 years – the norm for the formation of the first autobiographical memories – people had memories of toys, holidays, a house and the birth of another child in the family

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Three possible explanations

The authors of the The article offers three explanations of these first impossible memories. Most likely, it is an incorrect date: participants may confuse their age by extracting memories. This is also confirmed by the fact that all memories of the age of up to three years are abstract and are not related to specific and important events in life.

However, such an explanation is more likely to be accidental rather than systematic. In addition, according to researchers, the emergence of invented memories is probably the same desire of participants to analyze their own memories. The size of the sample, however, is large enough for the distribution to be random.

Finally, the third explanation is that the memories are fictitious – the authors use this term instead of the word "false" – and are formed by "Pieces" of the episodic and semantic memory of their childhood.

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" We suggest that what one person has in mind when retracing improbable memories of Fictional childhood is a mental representation similar to episodic memory, which consists of fragments of early experiences and some facts or knowledge about their own childhood / childhood, "explained psychologist Shazia Akhtar of the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom.

Memory during childhood can also see is affected by obesity, according to a study by Brown University – USA – published in the journal Obesity.

Victor Román
This news was originally published in N + 1, a science that adds up.