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Why We Can’t Remember Our Earliest Years
www.psychologytoday.com ^ | April 11, 2022 | Vanessa LoBue Ph.D.

Posted on 08/06/2025 8:05:40 PM PDT by kawhill

Infants form memories, but may not be able to recall them later.

(Excerpt) Read more at psychologytoday.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: babies; children; memory; pottytraining; remember; years
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To: Political Junkie Too

Those who are breast fed, well it’s obvious that they have other things on their minds. Those that weren’t wonder why not.


21 posted on 08/06/2025 8:33:10 PM PDT by bigbob (If thou doth eff around, thou wilt findeth out)
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To: kawhill

“The authors concluded that children’s memories, especially during the preschool years, are quite malleable and susceptible to suggestion.”

...causing MANY adults to spend many years in jail.


22 posted on 08/06/2025 8:35:19 PM PDT by BobL (Trusting one's doctor is the #1 health mistake one can make.)
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To: MikelTackNailer

She kept repeating “I Am Sick And Tired!!”. but never said what she was tired of.


23 posted on 08/06/2025 8:41:00 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: kawhill

Another of my odd things.
Yesterday for some reason I started thinking about what was my earliest memory and that someone from time to time had written articles about it. Now this post. Today.

Yesterday for some reason I started thinking about an old article (maybe about a book coming out) that said the first thing a person remembers from infancy sets the tone for their view of the world psychologically afterward.

Example: Something showing the world is dangerous and we have to real way to stop that because we have no power, makes the person feel that way all through life.


24 posted on 08/06/2025 8:41:07 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: kawhill

I have a number of incidents that I remember from about age two. One was sitting in a highchair watching my mother heat a jar of baby food. Another was when I stumbled and conked my head on the coffee table and my father carried me into the doctor’s office. I remember potty training, and a neighborhood Easter egg hunt.


25 posted on 08/06/2025 8:42:19 PM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican (God save the United States!)
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To: kawhill

Meant “have no real way”


26 posted on 08/06/2025 8:42:31 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: combat_boots

You were smarter than I was. My dad taught me to read at 5. Could and did read adult novels then. Recently found one of those old novels on AMZ.


27 posted on 08/06/2025 8:43:10 PM PDT by Veto! (Trump Is Superman)
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To: goodnesswins

Funny now, but not funny, then.

Wasp sting, dead center, back of my neck. “Cure” was supposedly baking soda paste and lots of baking soda in the warm bath, where I was deposited. No recollection of when I finally stopped crying.

Hot, sticky summer day, that was, and soon after, my sitting on the edge of the kitchen sink, with feet resting in the sink - for a hair cut.

Back on the floor, standing up, I dared to open the refrigerator door . . . and I looked up, because: There was the large, heavy salad bowl that had been placed a bit carelessly . . . and down it came . . . and I was its target. Knocked me out.

Followed days later by a “materials science test” of the gardening sheers: I wondered about, and “tested” their sharpness characteristic?

Probably, that was also the summer that I tested the house 120V system. Funny, the fingers are so small and can actually make contact with the metal in the wall outlet.


28 posted on 08/06/2025 8:44:07 PM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: Political Junkie Too

Joe Biden.

He finds it kind of comforting when his mind goes blank much of the day.


29 posted on 08/06/2025 8:44:24 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: kawhill

Wonder why they don’t use that info in a sci-fi/cop plot....as in the cops are looking for an infant who witnessed a crime so they can coerce the infants brain to conjure up thought, sounds, and visuals...maybe on Hallmark channel, and sweet mama tries to protect baby from criminal and the cops who want the baby. Mama falls in love with criminal who is pretending he is cop...good times for all...
Working title: Tiny Secrets


30 posted on 08/06/2025 8:45:00 PM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and harder to find. )
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To: kawhill

Another vote for trauma, when they circumcised me my mind went blank, finally after 3 or 4 years I finally started remembering little things.


31 posted on 08/06/2025 8:45:45 PM PDT by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
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To: Lazamataz

You’re a funny zygote.


32 posted on 08/06/2025 8:46:49 PM PDT by crusty old prospector
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To: Lazamataz; crusty old prospector

What crusty old prospector said.


33 posted on 08/06/2025 8:48:37 PM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: frank ballenger
I have a lot of PSYs on my transcript, and yes, one of the first questions is, what is one's earliest memory. And applying that to one's current situation.

Statistically, according to my professors, it's pretty accurate.

34 posted on 08/06/2025 8:48:57 PM PDT by real saxophonist (Michael Bennet claps on 1 and 3.)
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To: kawhill

I can remember sitting in a highchair and looking across the kitchen at my grandmother. Why that stuck in my memory, I don’t know other than the fact it might have been the last time I saw her alive.

Only one I can hang a date on was watching JFK’s funeral on our TV which was a 12”(?) black and white GE with a green case shortly before I turned 3.


35 posted on 08/06/2025 8:49:16 PM PDT by Clay Moore (My pistol identifies as a cordless hole punch. )
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To: kawhill

I remember my crib mobile and standing to play with it....then many other memories in a house I only lived in until age 2 and 7 months. Can’t remember yesterday, though.


36 posted on 08/06/2025 8:51:32 PM PDT by LittleBillyInfidel (This tagline has been formatted to fit the screen. Some content has been edited.)
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To: bunkerhill7

I remember being two and three when my mother hated me. Beautiful woman told me every day how ugly I was and she didn’t want to be seen with me. Just found an old 8x10 photo of her sitting on a bench at the beach smiling into the camera, with arm that should have been around me on her lap. There I stood, sort of wishing she’d hug me but I knew she wouldn’t.

BTW, even at my advanced age, people still tell me how good I look.


37 posted on 08/06/2025 8:52:16 PM PDT by Veto! (Trump Is Superman)
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To: kawhill

One Aunt of mine remembered something from 18 months.


38 posted on 08/06/2025 8:53:53 PM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14/12- 930am -rampage begins... 12/15/12 - 1030am - Obama team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: linMcHlp
Not an "earliest" memory, but you reminded me of something.

When I was about 10, I got the shit stung out of me by a jellyfish, off Jekyll Island.

Same treatment, baking soda paste; I itched for three weeks.

39 posted on 08/06/2025 8:58:41 PM PDT by real saxophonist (Michael Bennet claps on 1 and 3.)
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To: kawhill

Falling down stairs, staring too long at the sun, sticking a fork into an electric outlet, running with scissors...the usual stuff.


40 posted on 08/06/2025 9:06:16 PM PDT by MikelTackNailer (There's a lesson there if I were smart enough to learn it.)
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