[HN Gopher] Why can't we remember being born or our first words?
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Why can't we remember being born or our first words?
Author : Tomte
Score : 41 points
Date : 2022-06-12 11:54 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| dboreham wrote:
| Because the brain is running the wetware equivalent of CP/M at
| this point.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| I remember waking up and walking around the house until I ran
| into one of my parents. My father was complaining about something
| that apparantly I had done, he wanted me to say a phrase that
| obviously pointed to me and I remember thinking that it was dumb
| since that was the same as a confession.
|
| Notheless I repeated it to him since more than anything it seemed
| he just wanted me to say it for his own amusement. Shortly after
| while I was under this fog of confussion I was given photographs
| of me with some cousins at some nearby park, the event had
| happened a week earlier and I was very intrigued by these photos
| and spent a long time looking at them trying to recall the event
| in some way but no matter how much I tried I never did, to me it
| was the same as looking at a stranger's photos.
|
| That's my first memory, since then its been an uninterrupted
| stream. By my calculations I must have been older than 3 and
| younger than 5 since I remember when my sister was born who is
| the youngest but not my younger brothers. If someone ever
| mentions a past event all I ever need is a few pieces and then I
| will eventually recall without problems and with many more
| details than they themselves remember, same thing with any
| photograph that includes others. I've never experience anything
| similar to that initial event.
| dsego wrote:
| I've lost the visual memories, but I remember having memories
| from an early time, short glimpses. Things like trying to repeat
| words and the grownups not being patient enough and moving onto
| the next word before I could attempt to speak. Faint memories of
| my first steps, walking from my father to my mother, being proud,
| stuff like that. I remember a particular new year's eve, the
| grownups were dancing and I was in a crib alone, feeling left
| out. I remember not liking to wake up in the dark, being scared
| and crying for mom to get in, or the sensation of having a soiled
| diaper. People don't believe that I remember. My brother is the
| same, we still hold onto some distinct memories from really early
| on, although the specifics are getting muddled and eroded.
| mwint wrote:
| Wow, I always thought I had abnormally early memories, but
| nothing like this. Do you have these memories only from being
| very young? Or are the glimpses there from infant up to now?
| dsego wrote:
| Unfortunately, I'd forgotten a lot from my school years.
| There are of course moments, some more vivid than others, but
| I can't really remember my classmates, teachers, school
| activities and such anymore. I don't really reminisce a lot,
| maybe I could dig up the memories if I had someone else from
| that period to talk to.
| mongol wrote:
| I remember being carried around, having diapers changed on some
| table in a bathroom. "Oh back here again", I started to think.
| I am not kidding, of course I did not think that in words, but
| just the familiarity of it happening over and over. I believe
| those are true memories.
| [deleted]
| abyssin wrote:
| During a psychedelic trip, I had similar memories of how
| difficult speaking was in early childhood. It made me quite
| proud afterwards that I had finally managed to master speaking.
|
| During the same trip, I also heard my mother as if my mental
| dictionary of sounds was made of her voice.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Weirdly enough, I have a distinct memory when I was "young".
| Young was in my case, 1.5 years old.
|
| I met my great grandmother, whom was nearing her death. She knew
| that we were making one last visit and that I was coming. I
| remember meeting her, being in the old 80's hospital room with
| the upper white and lower green tiles. I remember how frail her
| hands were, like delicate paper. I remember getting out of my
| stroller and laying my head on her hand, carefully.
|
| I could feel this was my last and only moment with her, and that
| somehow a continuation or some completion was right then and
| there.
|
| I have other memories that become more 'solid' later. My memories
| really start around when I was 3 onwards, along when I was able
| to read. I never was _taught_... I just knew how to. My mom even
| still has my first alphabet I wrote down when I was 2.5y old.
| ddingus wrote:
| I have a couple! 2 years old and some change:
|
| Direction was important to me somehow. I can remember the
| orientation of every house we've lived in. And it's coarse,
| like north, west, etc...
|
| The very earliest one is of being in my crib, bouncing the
| little spring that is wound around one of the shafts that hold
| the crib together. I would lay there and lift it up, and it
| would bounce. Boing, boing, boing... Lift higher, more bounces.
| Slamming it down worked too. A related one, a bit later was
| flicking the little springy door stop and realizing they were
| the same kind of thing! And that realization is probably why I
| remember.
|
| I can remember my crib, parts of the house, and the porch with
| little walk leading to the fence and the little gate that could
| open to the sidewalk, out of our yard, into the world.
|
| One day, my parents set me down, opened that gate and walked
| next door, across the street! And there was this other little
| kid. A little older than me, his name was "cash" and I had
| associated "cash" with money, and why would someone name a
| person like money? I thought about that a lot while we met, and
| I have a set of photos from that day in my head. The walkway,
| being set down to walk. The gate opening, or open. Walking up
| to Cash, my parents on my left, us talking while they talked,
| and then the best:
|
| Cash said, "you want to play downstairs?" I said, "yeah"
| because I had been downstairs in our house a time or two and
| people had all manner of interesting stuff in the downstairs!
| Parts, equipment, things, and all sorts of smells, and the
| walls are usually not finished, can see stuff we don't always
| see.
|
| We walked in the door, Cash opened the door leading downstairs
| and flicked a light switch, and the light came on. He said,
| "Two way switch" and that it just worked when you needed it to.
| I remember being super impressed! Like that was some high tech
| our house did not have. Their house was much bigger than
| ours...
|
| I need to cut this short. Bottom line is those people were
| thieves. They had way more stuff downstairs than I had seen and
| it solidified in my mind. Tires, radios, stuff..
|
| Years later, age 17'ish, I mentioned all this to my mother, who
| said they moved after finding out!
|
| The people in this discussion saying that memory is about
| connections are on the right path. The earliest ones I have
| also have a basis, a connection of sort, a place to be.
| StopTheWorld wrote:
| Another thing is how can we date when a memory is?
|
| I have a collection of memories from when I was 22 months old,
| but I can date those in retrospect. I also have various memories
| of being fairly young, but have no idea if they were before or
| after 22 months as there is nothing to date them by. It's not
| that different than more modern memories - I can remember
| something happened about a decade back, but often have no idea if
| it happened eight years ago or twelve years ago, unless I can
| date and contextualize it by some means.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I see a lot of claims like this. I believe you believe it's
| true. The scientific evidence is to the contrary however.
|
| Memory at this age is _extremely_ malleable. And I mean
| "malleable" even years later. I mean "malleable" as in you can
| create false memories. Consider this experiment [1].
| Participants were told about meeting Bugs Bunny at Disney. A
| significant number of participants then added their own stories
| of the same thing happening. Bugs Bunny isn't at Disney. He's a
| Warner Brothers character.
|
| What I suspect happens is that you're told about these events
| at various points, enough that you start to fill in the
| details.
|
| Dating memories from childhood is even more difficult. It's
| easy to be _years_ off the mark. Often it 's only successfully
| dated by corroborating details eg you remember a dog that died
| when you were 4 or you remember your room in a house that you
| moved out of.
|
| [1]: https://www.washington.edu/news/2001/06/11/i-tawt-i-taw-a-
| bu...
| sampa wrote:
| I remember reading a book by Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander
| Luria about a man with 100% memory. Afair, he was able to recall
| the events right from his birth when he was still in a a crib.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky
| crummy wrote:
| There's an alternative explanation:
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/08/01
| elkos wrote:
| My father died when I was 31/2 years old. Now that I'm a
| toddler's father I remember a bit more of him and my mom carrying
| me around or my crib.
|
| Hope my kid will more memories of me, her mom and the people that
| love her than the few I have of my dad.
| aaron695 wrote:
| uberdru wrote:
| Lot of interesting comments here. It is odd that we Cartesians
| consider "memory" to be a kind of passive process, like geologic
| sedimentation, RAM, or something like a material impression.
| Memory is interactive. It's a skill, like walking. I've taught
| kids the art. It takes work and very specific techniques. I'd
| point anyone interested in the topic to folks like Henri Bergson,
| or Frances Yates's "Art of Memory".
| analog31 wrote:
| Being born is a clearly demarcated event, but first words are
| probably not.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| More like being conceived is, but at the moment we likely
| weren't conscious. From then on it is a long and slow process
| of becoming aware. Birth is only one of many steps on the way,
| it's more special for the mother and others than the person
| itself.
| mackman wrote:
| I remember visiting my moms house in my 20s and seeing an old
| dresser I had as a baby. I immediately had a flash of the feeling
| of chewing on the drawer handle. My theory is that the memories
| are there but they just don't make a lot of sense to us once we
| start to use language for storage and recall.
| mackman wrote:
| We moved when my baby was one year old. Both our old and new
| houses had stairs he would scoot down backwards on his belly.
| Once right after we moved he would reach the bottom and keep
| scooting backwards on the floor. He pretty clearly was thrown off
| by the fewer steps in the new house.
| dadjoker wrote:
| As Steven Wright says, "I kept a diary when I was born. It said,
| "Day 1 - Still recovering from the move. Day 2 - Everyone talks
| to me like I'm an idiot."
| strogonoff wrote:
| Among the different takes on consciousness one goes that we
| become conscious when our minds begin to model humans close to
| us. As you model others in your mind continuously over time, you
| end up modeling _their_ minds, which leads to creating a model of
| yourself embedded in them; consciousness as a sort of feedback
| loop.
|
| Yes, it implies that we are essentially conscious _through
| others_ and no man is truly an island.
|
| As the article mentions, it might explain the lack of
| autobiographical memories in early years.
|
| It also explains how treating a person as if they were X results
| in them eventually behaving as if they are X, especially if you
| are of consequence to them (a parent, a teacher) or if this
| treatment is persistent in their life. Since their model of
| themselves is partly your model of them, it adjusts
| correspondingly to whatever label they are assigned.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Memory is weird.
|
| Interestingly language shapes memory. There was a study I read
| years ago (digging up that citation would be next to impossible)
| that revolved around psychologists asking adults to recall
| memories from their childhood. And what was curious about the
| study is that all of the participants reverted to using simpler,
| more child like vocabulary to describe the memories, because the
| memories formed at the time were formed along with the level of
| language they had.
|
| I have observed this in myself when discussing certain computing
| concepts, talking about projects I undertook 20 and 30+ years
| ago, and describing in language those concepts that today we
| would simply say "oh, that's this data structure" or a particular
| technique or algorithm or concept.
|
| You observe the same thing in certain cultures that do not have
| the words to describe certain concepts, e.g. complex familial
| relationships in English. And you observe certain things in
| gendered and non-gendered Romance languages.
|
| I grew up before there were camcorders and video recording in
| every phone or even instamatic polaroid cameras in every hand at
| every point in life, and I have "core memories", very distinct
| events in my life, where I describe them as "riding a bicycle"
| moment. One day you cannot ride a bicycle, and then something
| clicks inside you, and then you can. Learning to swim, learning
| to read, learning to ride a bicycle, learning to wire up a
| circuit, learning to stand up in my crib, learning to take my
| first steps, learning to get out of the pushchair. I have a
| recurring nightmare, that has lessened over the years, as I've
| gotten older, but still holds the same terror, that forms part of
| my earliest memories, I would say I have had that nightmare
| before I could even speak coherently. It's like a movie that
| plays in my head, the exact same way, the exact same sounds, the
| exact same feelings of dread.
|
| I also log a lot of my life, so I don't recall "yesterday" but I
| can tell you a lot of what was going on in my life on any
| particular day, from deaths of pets and family members, to
| changes to my workshop, to code I wrote, to algorithms I was
| pondering, to new stuff I learnt.
| al_borland wrote:
| Most strong memories are either linked to a strong emotional
| event or can be linked to a lot of other memories/ideas.
|
| If I get a new piece of information, I'm much more likely to
| remember it if I can relate it to things I already know. The
| things that don't relate to anything else are difficult to
| remember, or at least difficult to recall.
|
| My theory is that when you're first born you have no basis to
| relate anything to. Eventually you experience enough things that
| your brain starts making connections to make it easier to start
| remembering things. Those early memories, if they exist, are
| orphaned and lost to time without a clear path to recall them.
| kqr wrote:
| Except when you're born you've been around for a few months
| already, likely felt one thing or another shared with your
| mother.
|
| You're right in another way, though: when you are born your
| body is still not physically wired up completely yet, a process
| which starts in the womb but we're not in there long enough to
| allow it to complete.
|
| This is part of the reasons newborns flail around so much --
| they're learning what's connected to what, and that takes lots
| of repetition.
|
| I would be surprised if this didn't affect the physical wiring
| of the brain, too.
|
| Also keep in mind that in the body, connectedness is not a
| binary idea. It's really the strength of connections in
| relation to each other that make up how we respond to things.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Except when you're born you've been around for a few months
| already
|
| With the same level of stimulation that you get from a
| sensory deprivation tank (by design.) Without memories and
| associations to get lost in, lying in a sensory deprivation
| tank would probably be a completely timeless thing, no
| different than being dead. There's very little you're going
| to learn in the womb that will help you to interpret what's
| happening outside, other than you may get some experience
| with the sounds of your mother's language. [edit: Feelings of
| acceleration? A sense of one's own mass?]
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| Am I the only one who remembers the "black void"? Before my first
| visual memory I was feeling something and nothing at the same
| time, it was like a black void that lasted a moment.
| mongol wrote:
| I don't know what you refer to. But I have some kind of memory
| that I think may be from the womb. It is very hard to put into
| words, but something similar to waking up from sleep. Just a
| memory of consciousness. Even if this memory may not be real,
| just "remembering" it makes me dizzy, because it feels like it
| is a memory from when the light was turned on inside me, so to
| say. A very strange feeling.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| My ex-girlfriend told a similar story. Her mum had chosen a
| "natural" home birth without anaesthetic.
|
| Years later, soon after learning to speak, the baby girl (my
| ex) kept talking about going back into the warm, dark, safe
| room.
|
| By the time she and I were in a relationship, it was unclear
| whether it was her own memory, or just what her mother had
| repeated back to her over the years. But the story has stuck,
| and it does make me think deeply about life.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's very little in a baby's head to hang those memories on.
| Not only can we not remember birth, but I'd bet that the baby
| doesn't remember it after five minutes or so (after the fear that
| it might happen again dies down.)
|
| The only reason I can recall anything is because the words that I
| use to try to recall it ("what did I do yesterday morning?") take
| me down a chain of associations that hopefully will spit me out
| yesterday morning sometime, and that thing I remembered (maybe
| that I dropped one of my shoes when I was putting them on, or
| that one of my teeth hurt when I brushed it) can be a conduit to
| remember the rest of my morning.
|
| The memory experiment just seems like spaced repetition to me
| [edit:which you can use to teach a cockroach, or a worm.] They
| show a baby a unique object with a particular use. The next time
| they show the baby that unique object, they either recall the
| particular use, or the experimenter demonstrates it again. As
| these periods grow longer and longer, the memories grow longer.
| The intuitive reason it would be less effective earlier in life
| than later is because babies can't see properly, or understand
| the positions of things in space, so they don't care when a
| mobile or a train moves; they don't recognize it as interesting.
|
| Note: I can never remember what I did yesterday morning, because
| with the way I process the world, there's usually nothing in the
| sentence "What did you do yesterday morning?" that would
| associate with a particular day; every morning is yesterday
| morning. If I'm celebrating having done something significant
| "yesterday," however, I can start with that thing and work
| backwards to how I prepared for that thing. Some people are
| journalers/diarists, or heavily scheduled, and knowing what they
| have to do today, or maybe the last thing they wrote in their
| journal, would bring up almost immediately the memories that I
| have a huge difficulty recalling.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| We have done some interesting studies on infant memories. At
| first, you are correct that they basically can't remember
| anything.
|
| Even then, though. At a very early age, they will recognize
| their mother. This comes well before "object permanence," which
| happens at about 8 months.
|
| (Object Permanence is the ability to remember a thing even
| after you can't see it anymore, and to recognize it as the
| same, rather than a new one, when it returns. It is the ability
| to mentally follow an object when it "goes away" and to
| understand that it still exists)
| pessimizer wrote:
| > At a very early age, they will recognize their mother.
|
| If there's any stimulus that gets worked over and over, it's
| your mother's face. Surely in a traditional mother-child
| relationship you use your mother's face to learn how faces
| work, probably even your own face.
|
| I'm not sure what you're trying to explain to me. I'm aware
| of object permanence.
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| Maybe they were trying to explain object permanence to you?
| How do they know you know it already?
| dontbenebby wrote:
| Would you want to?
| ksaj wrote:
| I think in order to recall something, you need to have some
| internalized understanding of it. In those very early formative
| years, you're still trying to understand 3D vision, and haven't
| yet learned to apply the shapes and colours you see to the
| crayons your using to scribble on the wall.
|
| In the same way that if you fail a high school math test based on
| material you covered in class already, it is because you were
| unable to recall the bits you don't yet understand. You've seen
| it before the test, but since you didn't understand it, you can't
| recall and apply it.
| lottin wrote:
| I remember standing on two legs for the first time.
| jannikarndt wrote:
| I find the distinction between "semantic memories" (of facts),
| "procedural memories" (how to do something) and "autobiographical
| memories" (stories from the past) very helpful when thinking
| about memories.
| verisimi wrote:
| Yes - that's very good.
|
| I would re-state what you said as:
|
| "semantic memories" (of facts in objective reality),
| "procedural memories" (how to do something) and
| "autobiographical memories" (of subjective experience).
| wmwmwm wrote:
| I remember several times putting my eldest son to bed when he was
| a few months old and having this intrusive thought that maybe the
| reason why he was yelling was because he knew he wouldn't
| remember today when he woke up the next day and that every day
| was like being reborn! Darker than a Black Mirror episode for
| sure! It only went away when he started developing more of his
| own personality
|
| (This stuff + sleep deprivation is a heady cocktail!)
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| Better yet: do not feel as bad because kids won't remember. If
| you are sleep-training them and they cry for hours, they won't
| remember the next day anyway.
|
| Edit: this is what a pediatrician said to help console a parent
| who was hesitant to try sleep training
| jessermeyer wrote:
| This is some approximation of what half the globe already
| believes to occur with reincarnation, but it is not felt
| exclusively as a dark terror. More like the setting and rising
| of the sun. The nights are dark and full of terror, but it is
| cast away with the coming rays.
| treeman79 wrote:
| https://hyperioncantos.fandom.com/wiki/Merlin_Sickness
|
| A variation on Merlin Sickness.
| tails4e wrote:
| I've a terrible memory (actually I think its more accurate to say
| recall, the memories are in there, it's just hard to access at
| times). However my earliest memory is of seeing an orange glow as
| I was on bed. I found out many years later, well in my 20s, that
| I used to sleep in a cot in my parents room that had an electric
| bar heater on the wall. We moved from that house before I was 1.
| Crazy.
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| Compared to many other species except marsupials, human babies
| aren't close to fully developed. It has to do with evolutionarily
| with infant brain size and the size of a woman's pelvis. Few
| other animals have such as a high mortality rate. Sheep, which
| are domesticated animals, are close in infant mortality rate to
| humans.
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