Forty per cent of people have a fictional first memory, study finds

Nearly 40 per cent of people have a fictional first memory (Getty images)

Current research indicates that people’s earliest memories date from around three years of age.

However the study, which saw one of largest surveys of people’s first memories conducted, found that 38.6 per cent of 6,641 people claimed to have memories from two or younger.

A total of 893 people said they experienced memories from one or younger.

This was particularly prevalent among middle-aged and older adult, with about 4 in 10 of this group experiencing fictional memories.

To investigate people’s first memories, a team of researchers from City, University of London, Nottingham Trent University and the University of Bradford, asked participants to detail their first memory along with their age at the time.

The memory had to be one participants were certain they remembered and not based on a family photograph, family story, or any source other than direct experience.

Using these descriptions researchers examined the content, language, nature and details of respondents’ earliest memory.

They also evaluated the reasons why people claim memories from an age that research indicates they cannot be formed.

As many of these memories dated before the age of two and younger, researchers suggest these fictional memories are based on remembered fragments of early experience - such as a pram, family relationships and feeling sad.

This is along with some facts or knowledge about their own childhood which may have been derived from photographs or family conversations.

As written in Psychological Science,researchers suggest what a person has in mind when recalling these early memories, is a mental representation consisting of remembered fragments of early experience and some facts or knowledge about their own childhood, instead of actual memories.

Over time, these mental representations come to be recollectively experienced when they come to mind and so for the individual they quite simply are ‘memories’ with content strongly tied to a particular time.

Dr Shazia Akhtar, first author and Senior Research Associate, at the University of Bradford, said: “We suggest that what a rememberer has in mind when recalling fictional improbably early memories is an episodic-memory-like mental representation consisting of remembered fragments of early experience and some facts or knowledge about their own infancy/childhood.

“Additionally, further details may be non-consciously inferred or added, e.g. that one was wearing nappy when standing in the cot. Such episodic-memory-like mental representations come, over time, to be recollectively experienced when they come to mind and so for the individual they quite simply are ‘memories’ which particularly point to infancy.”

Professor Martin Conway, director centre for Memory and Law at City, University of London and co-author of the paper, said: “In our study we asked people to recall the very first memory that they actually remembered, asking them to be sure that it wasn’t related to a family story or photograph. When we looked through the responses from participants we found that a lot of these first ‘memories’ were frequently related to infancy, and a typical example would be a memory based around a pram.

“For this person, this type of memory could have resulted from someone saying something like ‘mother had a large green pram’. The person then imagines what it would have looked like. Over time these fragments then becomes a memory and often the person will start to add things in such as a string of toys along the top.

“Crucially, the person remembering them doesn’t know this is fictional. In fact when people are told that their memories are false they often don’t believe it. This partly due to the fact that the systems that allow us to remember things are very complex, and 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.”