On average the earliest memories that people can recall point back to when they were just two-and-a-half years old, a new study suggests.
The findings, published in peer-reviewed journal Memory, pushes back the previous conclusions of the average age of earliest memories by a whole year. They are presented in a new 21-year study, which followed on from a review of already-existing data.
“When one’s earliest memory occurs, it is a moving target rather than being a single static memory,” explains childhood amnesia expert and lead author Dr Carole Peterson, from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
“Thus, what many people provide when asked for their earliest memory is not a boundary or watershed beginning, before which there are no memories. Rather, there seems to be a pool of potential memories from which both adults and children sample.
“And, we believe people remember a lot from age…
