So I was told in psychology that you start to form explicit memory when your 2 and before that you only have what's called implicit memory. I just want to know if this is true because a friend told me that the earliest someone can recall memories is 4 and you can't remember anything before the age of 4 but I was taught differenty. So I was wondering if anybody had an article from a credible source that talks about this.

I can remember a lot of my " baby years" (when I say baby, I mean baby, not toddler)

my earliest memory is sitting in my mothers living room listening to one of her vinyl records, and I remember it was so crackly. hahaha.

I remember too my nursery ryme video.

it's all that would stop me crying

hahaha, recently actually I felt the urge to look up some of the songs from that time (on that old video), and actually found them

[lizardlady]

I was taught in grad school that we can not create memories until we have acquired language skills. Sorry, no article to back that up.

Personally I have memories from before I was nine months old. My memories are not in words. They are more like pictures or movies. I "ran away" before I could walk. I got out of my playpen in the front yard and was boogieing down the sidewalk when my mom caught up with me. I can remember the sidewalk sliding by as I crawled along. I have plenty of other memories from before I was two. I've been told by multiple sources that it's weird I can remember that far back.

On the flip side I have friends who say they can't remember anything from their preschool age years.

[*Laurie*]

My earliest memory is of crawling out of my crib during a storm (I thought the lightning would strike inside my bedroom), running as fast as I could to my parents' bedroom, and crawling into their bed. I remember that I was wearing a fuzzy "footsie" - it was like a warm onesie, but with feet in it. So I would have been under 2 years of age.

I don't have an article to cite, but my own memory of the above is vivid.

I have conscious memories from about 2. However I witnessed something very traumatic around 14 months and it traumatized me. I dont consciously remember it, but its impacted me.

[Fresia]

Earliest memories are flashes mostly the solid ones from under a year old:

Lying belly down on a blanket, under a pergola, (not knowing what that was, course) can see the embankment of flowers and plants, a toy of some kind,and a lizard ran in front of me; I remember starting but tried to touch it, hearing my mom and grandmother laugh from somewhere when I tried to touch it and cried when it ran. My mom says that's where she went wrong with my fascination of reptiles at such a young age LOL; I now know this was our house when I was 2 mos old to 8 mos old. It's funny how the bougainvillea and hibiscus on the pergola have stayed with me as some of my favorite plants and that's the only places we've ever lived that they've grown. Congers a happy memory.

Trying to grab hold of our black lab's fur on her shoulder and trying to walk with her, leaning into her; then sleeping in the warm crook of her side, her fur on my cheek, and getting sloppy kisses on my fingers, my mom hands reaching toward me, covering me with a blanket.

[LiteraryLark]

I've heard many people say they can remember things from being a "baby-baby-not-toddler-baby". My earliest memory was about 2-3ish and I needed my dad to help me tie my shoes.

[mote.of.soul]

I remember reading a book by the famous scientist Carl Sagan where he said his earliest memory was of being red and cold. He speculated that it was a memory of his own birth, as he was born by C-section.

But I have a definite memory of something which happened when I was three.

[Blueberrybook]

I am pretty sure I was in my 2's. My memory is of sitting on my grandmother's kitchen floor while she was cooking, surrounded by plastic bowls and pots and holding a big wooden spoon. I'm sure I made a real racket. She did raise 5 kids though, so maybe she was used to it.

[eskielover]

I remember one thing that wasn't in a photo....I was sitting in my highchair & the dish had animals around it each in it's own floaty clear liquid & hot water filled the dish to keep the food warm. I even remember the smell of the baby food. I was born Feb 1953.....so I was old enough to be sitting up in a highchair.

Another memory was a little older. I was in the bath tub & my mom had left their african love bird in it's cage outside. Horrible noise. My mom went out & I remember her saying a cat knocked over the cage & managed to kill the bird. I am not sure if I actually remember the actual event or whether my mom told me about it later & I just vividly remember it.

At around 3, my great grandmother had a stroke. I remember visiting her in the sanitorium (what it was called in those days) It was on the side of a hill in So. Calif & all the beds were lined up together with windows looking out to the hills across the narrow valley. I remember how bad it smelled. Then I remember she died & I don't remember the funeral but I remember afterward playing outside her house on the parkway around a tree with other distantely related family kids I really didn't know. This happened around 3 years old.

I honestly have less memories of my life the older I got. Snapshots here & there throughout ny growing up years.

My earliest memory is 2 years old. I walked into a closet and grabbed some paints. I can still see it. There were no pictures or stories of it, just my memory. (Well story as MY story, yes, of course, lol. But not from anyone else.) I know the age because of the timeframe living in that house. I have quite a number of memories from before 4 (again from timing of living location, as well as parent's separation timeframe), so I think your friend is wrong. One was of a very clear memory of the layout of the house of one of my grandmothers. When I recounted it to my mother many years later (like in my early 40's, when I was still speaking to her), it freaked her right out how much detail I had. I feel quite sure that she worried what else I might remember...

[Mountaindewed]

I can remember when I was 1.5 years. However I’m not sure if I’m turly remembering things, or just remember being told about them later, or if I’m just creating memories that don’t even exist.

[splitimage]

I have memories from when I was around 2 or 3, of having afternoon tea with my maternal grandma, and then of playing with her jewelery box, on her bed, when she was sick. I also remember going to her funeral when I was about 5.


I like these memories, they're mostly happy.

splitimage

I remember being in my pushchair I was possibly about 1 year old, I also remember going to playschool when I was 2 years old.

[ShadowGX]

I don't really have any solid memories, just little flashes here and there.

[amicus_curiae]

Sometimes the memories of our younger years can be false memories from tales told by others, constructed by (or inspired by) photographs or films or even photographs and films of others that we find ‘likeable.’

Our adult self longs to understand our complete selves from genesis to the present and we create memories of very early years to make ourselves ‘whole.’ We cannot really ‘remember’ until we’re around three-years-old.

Anything else is hokum. And bunkum.

[amicus_curiae]

Originally Posted by Mountaindewed

I can remember when I was 1.5 years. However I’m not sure if I’m turly remembering things, or just remember being told about them later, or if I’m just creating memories that don’t even exist.

That’s what we do; we create earlier-than-possible memories to ‘fill in the gap’ from birth, sometimes.

As an example, I have a photograph of myself, decked out in cowboy gear, standing with a long-rifle on our driveway in California. I was two. But I saw the photograph as a 3-4-year-old and constructed a memory of a hot summer sun at the time that the photo was snapped — on Christmas Day.

Sometimes you can do some detective work and discover how you created a ‘memory.’ It’s fairly easy to find sources that use three as the magic memory age.

I have some memoeries from when I was probably about 2 or 3. That's why I was asking. I lived in this house where my grandparents lived upstairs and we lived on the bottom. I also remember a few dreams I had. I was the one who came up and told them about my memories there and they said we used to live there. So maybe these things happened when I was 3 and that's why I remember but my friend said you can't remember anything from before you where 4.

When I was ALMOST 2, I broke my leg (an older child jumped on me). I remember it.

[Row Jimmy]

I remember I was about 2 and I was riding my tricycle in the driveway and my dad was grilling on the hibachi next to the driveway. I drove off the driveway on the lawn and fell off the bike, landing in the hibachi. I remember my dad scooping me up in a nano second and running me over to the sprinkler. Then a few days later, I remember my mom being petrified by the Tornado Outbreak of 1968 when a bunch of tornados landed a few miles from my house. Then, everything is blank after I discovered alcohol at age 3. . Weird.

[seeker33]

I remember a short fragment from my first birthday. My mum held me in her lap and I sensed her stress and anxiety. I said "mummy sad". At first she didn't understand me so I had to repeat. She said "oh no, mummy is fine!" which frustrated me because I sensed it wasn't true but I couldn't understand it yet. Years later I asked her if that was true or a dream and she confirmed that yes it truly happened. She was stressed because I was supposed to go to surgery the following day.

Memories that I know are true (I don't have to ask parents if they are real or dream) are from about 2.

[kreg]

Dr. Brian Weiss says that the only reason we don't remember previous lives is because we are wound up in living or in the alpha brain frequencies and so hypnosis is used to slow us way down to access those memories.

[kreg]

I've forgotten one earlier but when I was about 4 I jumped on my dad's lap and asked him what the little bottles were for on the work bench in the lab where he worked. He said "we throw them on the floor" I think I remember this because I suspected he was pulling my leg. I thought gee don't they leak through the cracks in the floor?