How photographs and family stories corrupt your own individual memories

[Mart 'n' Al]

I am trying to document my memories from before the age of seven and a half, which was a convenient cut-off date in my childhood as my parents moved house at the time.

It has made me realise that it is difficult to separate what you've seen in photographs, and what your parents and other relatives might have discussed in front of you, from your own individual memories.   For example, do I really remember my tricycle, or is it just that I've seen it in a photograph?

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others.

Martin

[Craclyn]

I think my “early memories” are mainly the result of photographs and things I have been told.

[andrewalston]

One of my earliest memories is of riding a tricycle - the sort with pedals attached directly to the front wheel. There's no photo of it as far as I know.

However I also remember the forbidding upslope in the driveway as you went towards the road. Today I can't see any slope at all, and the road has, if anything, been raised by a couple of layers of new surface.

My memories of the wallpaper in the front bedroom do tally with those of my parents. We moved out of that house just after I turned 4.

[Treetotal]

A very difficult question to answer. When I did Psychology A Level we did cover "Learning and Memory" and more than one study suggested that a child is not capable of autobiographical memories until the age of around two. I argued strongly against this theory as I can clearly remember being in a room by myself in a cot with very high bars, and there was a flowered curtain to the side and all the walls were plain green. (I obviously made sense of my visual memory when I was old enough to make sense of the world around me).  People came and went and their faces were covered with only their eyes showing. When I asked my Mother where this could have been she looked shocked and told me that was when I was in hospital on an isolation ward with suspected Diphtheria, she said that I was 17 months old at the time, and was later found to have "Plural Pneumonia"  This had never been discussed as my Mother lost a baby girl who died of Pneumonia age 7 months before I was born.
I believe many of the memories we have from our childhood are inaccurate as we may remember a little piece of an event but the brain compensates by filling in the gaps for us to make sense of it thereby creating a false memory. On occasions we hear of an event from the past, imagine the scene and come to believe that we were there. My sister insisted that she remembered being with me when my Mother was running through a storm with me in a "Tan-Sad" both of us getting soaking wet and her face looked full of fear as she was terrified of thunder and lightning, but I have told my Sister this story many times when recalling our childhood memories, she has heard it so many times that she now believes that she was there and witnessed it. I know she would have been at school as she was 3 years older than me and I was about two years old, she doesn't appear in my mental image of that day that has stayed with me.

Carol

[Erato]

I have many memories from before the age of seven for which there is no photographic evidence and which, as far as I know, have never been reconstructed for me by my parents.  To mention just one, I recall very distinctly when my dad showed me wintergreen when I was about five.  And I recall that he also sang a few lines from 'Wintergreen for President' at the time.  If the little dirt lane in Harwich, Massachusetts is still there, I could probably get to within 50 yards of the very spot.

[Andrew Tarr]

... she said that I was 17 months old at the time, and was later found to have "Plural Pneumonia" 

By now you will have realised that your pneumonia was pleural, not plural  .

I think we must regard personal memories, and our recollections of family folklore, not with suspicion but with a very open mind.  Some memories may be intense but our interpretations of them can mutate over the years.  The facts behind a couple of family tales I heard from my parents may have been explained by reports I have discovered on the web.

My granny's father died of typhoid in his thirties in Anglesey, and that was somehow connected with the Penmon lifeboat.  In fact he had been rescued from the rising tide while fishing several months before he died.  And my teenage grandfather had 'run away to sea' in Ireland after an incident involving a horse.  It seems that his father had been trying to recover payment for 'the services of an entire horse' at about that time, and I can't easily imagine a connection between those events.

[Treetotal]

Andrew...I was aware, predictive text has mind of it's own....well spotted.
I couldn't agree with you more. Research has taught me that stories passed down from elderly relatives are at odds with what I have learned to be the real story.
Carol

[Kiltpin]

There is a theory that when an event happens we remember it. When we recall that memory, we remember that remembrance and not the original memory. The original memory having been "over written" by our later later recall of that memory.   

It supposedly explains why some memories fade or become incomplete.

My own earliest memory is seeing a band of brilliant white, a band of reddy brown above that and bright green above that.  What it meant I did not know, until I mentioned to my mother when I was about 50. She said it was the view from my nursery window. A wide gloss white window sill, the terracotta roof tiles of nearby houses and the greenery of the trees in the Bombay zoo. We left India before my second birthday. 

Regards 

Chas

[eadaoin]

I remember getting my tricycle. There's a photo of it, but what I remember is that I couldn't turn the pedals.

I remember a bit of my first day in school. The teacher asked me if I'd like to do a jigsaw. I chose a really hard one and she wanted me to do an easier one, but I insisted because I liked the picture. I remember getting about 8 pieces stuck together.