Consistency of Earliest Memories Is Related to Direct Retrieval

General Audience Summary People rarely remember events before the age of 3 or 4. This observation, called childhood amnesia, has fascinated researchers because unraveling its mystery will reveal the cues to the development of children's ability to retain events for future recall. As in many studies, to capture the age that marks the onset of forming autobiographical memories, we asked the participants for their earliest memories. However, to understand the nature and implications of earliest memories, we asked them three times, in 2014, 2016, and 2020, and examined their consistency and the ages of experiencing them. In the last two sessions, we also asked them to recall the event they had reported in the earlier sessions and whether they remembered the event relatively automatically or after a search. The results showed that about 50% of the participants reported the same memory every time. A similar ratio of participants reported that they retrieved these events from their memory directly. There was considerable overlap between those who reported the same events and those who claimed direct retrieval, suggesting that some people have a memory stored as their earliest memory, allowing automatic retrieval and consistent reporting of the same memory. The dates for earliest memories and memory characteristics were also consistent across sessions, even if they were for different events. This finding suggests that participants with a memory designated to be the earliest report the same event or that the scarcity of memories from early childhood leads them to select the same memory every time. Those participants reporting different memories choose one of the few memories that are not much different from each other in their qualities. We explored the retrieval type and speed in remembering earliest memories and their consistency in content, dating, and event characteristics over time. A total of 73 young adults (M (age) = 28.58, SD (age) = 3.52) participated with 2- and 4-year time lags. Results indicated 56.5%, 56.2%, and 53.4% content consistency over 2, 4, and 6 years, respectively. When earliest memories were consistent, they were dated earlier than when they differed across the three sessions. Similarly, directly remembered earliest memories were dated earlier than the generated ones. Most of the event characteristics displayed no significant differences as a function of consistency or retrieval type. Direct retrieval was similar in prevalence but faster in speed compared to generative retrieval. Finally, participants who reported direct retrieval were more likely to remember the same earliest memories over time, pointing to the association between consistency and the retrieval type.