I’ve spoke to a few people about this and they all say that there first real memory was an injury that they had. Is there a reason for this?
In: Biology
Interestingly, I read an article a while back that referenced a study about this. Couldn’t find the article, but I did find the abstract:
[In this study of Palestinian children,](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28332408/) who are often sadly facing some real trauma in their early years, over 40% offered up a positive memory as their earliest, while under a third named painful or traumatic memories – the rest being more neutral. So it really is a crapshoot, because it doesn’t even seem that the strong emotions of injury or pleasant memories make those early memories stick all that much better than more neutral or miscellaneous memories.
That being said, the earliest memory I can recall is of myself trying to walk down our front stairs by myself and taking a little fall – nothing serious, but upsetting. So add me to the “injury” column. Anecdotal, but still!
The strength of a memory depends on your emotional reaction to it. Pain is a very powerful emotion, thus leads you to form strong memories. (It’s the reason why “trauma” is a thing, and why punishment is used so often as a training method – especially for animals)
For me, there are a couple, that I can’t quite place the order of – but they were all positive and I can’t remember any negative ones from that time period (1-3 years old).
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