0:06

Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

0:08

My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

0:10

and it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault for

0:12

an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

0:15

This one originally published April fourth,

0:17

twenty twenty three, and it's part one of

0:19

our series called Before You Could Remember,

0:21

about the age at which we start

0:23

forming permanent memories or memories

0:26

that we can access later. We get into

0:28

all the nuances there in the episode,

0:30

so we hope.

0:31

You like it. Yeah, these were a lot of fun and they

0:33

generated a lot of listener commentary.

0:36

So if you have fresh thoughts on this

0:38

episode and the ones to follow, write in. We'd

0:40

love to hear from you.

0:44

Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production

0:47

of iHeartRadio.

0:55

Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

0:57

is Robert.

0:57

Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today

1:00

we're going to be talking about that hole

1:02

in your memory before the

1:04

earliest one you can produce, also

1:07

known as infantile amnesia.

1:09

And hey, listeners, you were promised

1:12

you would be getting some baby looked

1:14

at Me topics this year. My

1:17

wife and I had a baby this past October,

1:19

and I think many of you have been practically daring

1:22

me to embark on indulgent

1:24

dad topics. But here we've arrived

1:27

at one because so

1:30

I think the way I got here was recently

1:33

we have started spending a lot

1:35

of time trying to make a five

1:38

month old baby laugh. Rob,

1:40

I don't know how much experience you have with this, like

1:42

the parent comedian routine.

1:45

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of hours

1:47

clocked on that particular stand up game.

1:50

Well, sometime recently Rachel

1:52

figured out what our baby's

1:55

favorite genre of comedy was,

1:57

at least for that day, and it

1:59

will a textile gravity comedy.

2:02

It was. The act was

2:04

you hold a cloth up in the air and

2:06

then you drop the cloth on the baby,

2:09

and when the cloth falls down and hits

2:11

the baby, this is hilarious.

2:14

It was creating these storms

2:17

of laughter from another dimension,

2:19

truly riveting experience, at least for

2:22

us. But I

2:24

started to wonder, like, why is this

2:26

funny? And of course I wanted to

2:28

ask her, but she's a five month old baby,

2:30

not talking yet, she can't explain why it's

2:33

funny. And I

2:35

was thinking, one day will I be able

2:37

to ask her. You remember when

2:39

we were dropping the cloth on you,

2:42

and you thought this was so funny. Why was

2:44

it funny? What was going through your mind?

2:46

But I just know that's probably never

2:48

a conversation that's going to go anywhere, because

2:51

is she really going to even remember this

2:54

by the time she can talk about it, Because

2:57

I certainly don't have any memories

3:00

that I can bring up now from

3:02

being five months old, or even from

3:04

being one year old, or even from

3:06

being two years old. I'm not

3:08

sure, honestly what my earliest

3:11

memory is, but I know I don't have any

3:13

memories I feel confident about

3:16

from the first several years of my life.

3:18

And it turns out this is not unique

3:20

to me. This is pretty common. Most people

3:23

feel this way, that they don't have

3:25

any really solid memories

3:27

from the first several years of their lives.

3:30

And so I just got really interested

3:32

in the question of why that is.

3:34

Yeah, I mean, unless you are biological mother

3:37

partook of the waters of life, she

3:40

was pregnant, you're probably not pre

3:43

born like that. You're not gonna You're not gonna

3:45

remember these things. And

3:47

we'll get into some there

3:49

is a certain amount of subjectiveness

3:53

to all of this, and we'll get into some of that, and certainly

3:56

we'd love to hear from any listeners out there who

3:58

are firm on this or feel firm and

4:00

are like, yes, I do remember being

4:03

under the age of two that sort of thing. But

4:07

most of the research seems to point

4:09

in a different direction that most. It seems

4:11

like most of what we remember is

4:13

after a certain point in our development, and

4:16

that certainly your daughter has not

4:18

quite reached that point.

4:20

Which is not to say that she is not

4:22

capable of memory,

4:25

because I mean several things I

4:27

can notice. She recognizes faces,

4:30

and she is forming associations

4:32

and routines. There's learning going on

4:35

at this point in a baby's development, and

4:37

learning is to some extent based on memory.

4:39

So it's not that the brain is not capable

4:42

of any type of memory at this point.

4:44

But it seems that most people's

4:46

brains at this point are

4:48

not producing episodic or

4:50

autobiographical memories. Episodic

4:52

memories meaning memories of specific

4:55

events or experiences,

4:58

not producing sort of narrative memory

5:00

of that type that can be retrieved

5:02

later in life. I guess it's a question whether

5:05

memories of that type are formed

5:07

at all, And so

5:09

I don't have any memories like that. From infancy.

5:11

Most people report the same, and

5:14

I cannot, honestly from my memory,

5:16

tell you a story about anything that happened

5:19

before I was probably like four or five

5:21

or so. You do

5:23

bring up the idea that there are a small number

5:25

of people who claim they can remember like being born

5:28

or being a baby. But even in those cases,

5:30

while you can't say, well, you're just wrong,

5:33

you don't remember that, I think it's reasonable to

5:35

be skeptical about whether those are real

5:37

memories or just later confabulations.

5:40

Yeah. Yeah, And on this note, I think it's

5:42

important to remind listeners that fabricated

5:44

memories are by no means necessarily

5:46

intentional. They are numerous ways

5:49

that we've discussed in the show before, numerous ways

5:51

that false memories may be encoded. There

5:53

are plenty of examples of cases where attested

5:56

early childhood memories can ultimately

5:58

be attributed to stories one is told about

6:01

one's younger years and or

6:03

something formed out of say longing or

6:05

desire for a certain framework. A

6:07

lot of stuff like that out there. And again, we,

6:10

as we've touched on many times before, like

6:12

we alter memories every time we draw

6:14

them out, every time we get them out of the storage.

6:17

We get our fingerprints all over them,

6:19

and we change them. And then ultimately, the

6:21

memories that are most dear to us, the

6:23

ones that we pull out the most are

6:25

the ones that are potentially the most altered.

6:28

Right because the form in which they are

6:30

stored in memory is ultimately the form

6:32

in which you rehearse them. You know, it's not a videotape.

6:35

It is a it's a constant sort of like

6:37

rewriting over the same document.

6:40

Yeah. Yeah. And and to your point, though,

6:42

it is kind of ironic that when you have

6:44

a young child in the house like this,

6:47

for parents, this is

6:50

or or even you know, other people in that infant's

6:53

life, these are some of the dearest

6:55

moments. You know, you're experiencing these moments

6:57

and you're like, this, this is you can feel

6:59

it in you can you know this is something

7:01

you're never going to forget. And then on the other

7:03

hand, you have at least a very

7:06

strong suspicion that the child is not

7:08

going to remember it the way that you remember

7:10

it. Uh And and

7:12

it's it's so it's something that I know that we

7:14

my wife and I talked a lot about with our son when

7:16

he when he was much younger, and sometimes

7:19

my son will come in on this, because when your jow gets

7:21

over, you're always like, well do you remember this? Do you remember

7:24

that? Or I remember when this happened, but I

7:26

know you don't remember it. And so

7:28

there are a lot of conversations like that. And

7:30

then sometimes we'll be on a trip and our

7:32

son, at this point, who's almost eleven,

7:34

he'll comment like, oh, well, that baby's not even going to

7:36

remember that vacation, seeing

7:38

like a you know, another couple with an infant on a trip,

7:42

but.

7:43

It might as well not even take it.

7:45

Yeah, well, you know that's that's kind of the joke, right,

7:47

Like just go and put your baby in a closet for a few

7:49

years because they're not going to remember these expensive trips.

7:51

But of course you can't do that. That's not how

7:53

it works. You have to have these moments and these

7:55

trips, and and just because the

7:57

baby's not recalling

7:59

it the way an adult recalls something

8:02

later doesn't mean that it's not quote

8:04

unquote remembered.

8:06

Right, those I mean those instead of

8:08

say having autobiographical

8:10

memories that can later be retrieved in narrative

8:13

form. Instead, the effect of

8:15

those experiences might be say structural

8:17

impacts on the development of the brain.

8:19

Right, there's a great quote that came

8:22

up in a paper I'm going to source here in

8:24

a bet where they said something

8:26

that you know, it's quite simple, but I think is

8:28

important to keep in mind in this context and memory

8:31

context in general. The brain remembers

8:33

what it needs to remember, you know, and

8:36

and the memory demands on

8:38

say a five month old baby or a one

8:40

year old child one and a half year old child are

8:42

different. And therefore, again, it's

8:44

nothing bad about not

8:46

having not being able to recall

8:49

when you were two or three or four or five.

8:51

It's just it's just what your brain

8:53

needed to do. And as we'll get into, there are different

8:55

reasons for this.

8:57

Yes, So that's what we're going to be exploring in

8:59

this series. Questions like why

9:01

don't most people have specific

9:04

autobiographical memories of being a

9:06

baby. Do we have episodic

9:09

memories of infancy which get like erased

9:11

from the brain for some reason, or do

9:14

we never form episodic memories

9:16

of babe life in the first place. Obviously

9:18

there's some kind of memory

9:21

going on in very young childhood

9:23

and infancy, but maybe it just like it doesn't

9:25

have an episodic memory component. Maybe

9:27

it can remember associations and images,

9:30

but maybe not like sequences

9:32

of events. Or maybe

9:34

is there some weird third option, like we

9:37

do form memories and they're not exactly

9:39

erased later, but they're sort of fuzzy

9:42

or hard to retrieve for some reason. That

9:45

that's what got me really interested in this

9:48

exploration today. But of course I

9:50

also got very interested in the question of

9:53

before people could do experiments

9:55

on this, they must have observed childhood

9:58

development firsthand and had all

10:00

kinds of questions of this sort and probably come

10:02

up with answers whether or not those answers were

10:04

accurate.

10:06

Yeah. So yeah, let's get in a little bit

10:08

into just sort of some of the history of some

10:10

of some sort of pre modern infant

10:13

opinions, and also a little bit of cultural

10:15

variation. I think one of the things

10:17

to keep in mind about pre modern and pre scientific

10:19

beliefs about infant memory is that a lot of it

10:22

is going to come down to older beliefs about

10:24

what human infants are and

10:26

what they are not, And

10:28

so this is all a mixture of things

10:30

based on cultural tradition but

10:33

also based on observation. I think it

10:35

goes without saying that no matter

10:37

what may have been ultimately

10:39

recorded in literature ancient people,

10:42

you know they would have applied different

10:45

insights and different ideas to the experience

10:47

of babies, but some things were obviously

10:49

going to be the same. Babies evoke strong

10:51

emotions in us. That's just part of the way

10:53

we're hardwired. Babies

10:55

require a great deal of care. Babies

10:58

cry baby is inherently can't

11:00

communicate precisely. And also,

11:03

human memories of early childhood or the

11:05

lack thereof, would have been identical

11:07

more or less to what we have now, or at least

11:10

any differences are not going to be based merely on

11:12

say the timeline,

11:16

and we'll get into some of that in a bit.

11:18

Right. For example, I would really not say

11:20

that the current characteristics of

11:23

infantile amnesia or memory

11:25

formation and very young children are say, a

11:28

result of the Internet

11:30

or some other kind of like technological context,

11:33

especially because we know people have been in

11:35

the more modern era doing

11:37

research on this going back more than one hundred

11:40

years, so before a lot of

11:41

the sort of like communications and

11:44

technology context we live in today, people

11:46

were asking, Hey, when are people's first memories

11:49

and what do they remember about childhood?

11:51

And the answers were largely the same

11:53

as what we get when we ask that today.

11:56

Yeah. Yeah, So it doesn't seem like there's any

11:58

expectation that there's been significant variation

12:00

in this, aside from variation that occurs

12:03

for cultural reasons and so forth.

12:05

But again, a lot of this is going to come down to how we

12:07

think about babies. And again

12:09

it's interesting because on one hand, yes,

12:12

we have this inherent draw towards our

12:14

own young and to the young of our community.

12:17

But at the same time, you know, you often hear people

12:20

talk about older kids, and you'll hear them say,

12:22

well, you remember what it was like when you were that age.

12:24

You know, there's a certain relatability in that. But

12:27

generally they're not saying this about

12:30

infants or very young toddlers, because

12:33

by and large, we don't remember what it was it

12:35

was like to be that age. We only remember the stories

12:38

of what we were like at that age and so forth.

12:40

Now, examining how people

12:43

in ancient times, for example,

12:46

thought about babies, thinking

12:48

about pre modern and pre scientific thinking

12:50

into all of this, you also have to take

12:52

into account infant mortality rates,

12:55

which were often high in ancient times,

12:58

and I realized that infant mortality is not

13:00

exactly a fun topic. But some

13:03

of the attitudes of the ancient world surrounding

13:05

the nature of infants is more sharply expressed

13:07

over the subject, or so it seems.

13:10

So we are going to touch on it a little bit,

13:12

at least in passing.

13:13

Yeah, it's sort of unavoidable for most

13:16

of human history, for most people, just

13:18

a major fact of life.

13:20

Yeah. So I looked at a few different

13:22

sources about the understanding of infants

13:24

in ancient Greek and ancient Rome. In

13:27

Childbirth and Infancy in Greek and Roman Antiquity

13:29

from twenty eleven, author Varonech

13:32

Dawson points out a number of interesting

13:34

things about how these ancient people

13:36

seems to seem to have considered young children

13:39

based on the evidence we have to go on today.

13:42

And so I want to outline some interesting points

13:44

that they bring up. First of all, most

13:46

of what we know relates to elite

13:48

children rather than the lives of those born

13:50

into lower classes or to enslaved

13:53

people. Also, we have to think about the terminology

13:55

here. This is fascinating. So you know, basically

13:58

the infant toddlerdynamic

14:01

and duality. It's

14:03

interesting and potentially telling in

14:05

that changes in terminology may

14:07

indicate changes in cultural understanding

14:10

of young children. So you

14:12

know, certainly there's a difference between an

14:14

infant and a toddler, and we tend to sort

14:16

of we tend to mark that

14:18

transition point. But to

14:21

what extent is that transition point born

14:23

out in a people's language,

14:25

and at what point does the language potentially

14:28

shift, etc. Basically just sort of

14:30

a larger background topic to keep in mind,

14:32

but the big point here is that it's most

14:34

helpful to think of childhood as a journey,

14:36

one that hits different milestones, goes

14:39

through different stages, and

14:41

that in this in turn alters the way that

14:43

adults view the child and

14:45

the degree to which they can be integrated

14:48

into society. Also, Dawson

14:50

points out quote in times of high infant

14:53

mortality, these stages represented

14:55

steps for hope of survival

14:58

and increasing parental bonding. We'll

15:00

come back to exactly what is meant

15:02

by that, but basically it comes down to, like,

15:04

how does a culture deal with the fact

15:07

that there is a high infant mortality

15:09

rate. Is there more of a sort of pushing

15:11

away kind of like a ultimately

15:14

a stoic reaction sort of distancing

15:17

of the infant from

15:19

the society or making it kind of a marginal state,

15:22

or is there indeed still a lot

15:24

of bonding going on and so forth. Now,

15:37

with the Greek and Roman viewpoints, specifically, what

15:40

we think of as infancy would have probably ended

15:42

at age two or three, with full

15:44

weaning, increased ability to speak, and

15:47

at age three integration into practiced

15:49

religion at least at some degree. Now,

15:51

Medically speaking, it was previously supposed

15:54

that there was next to nothing in the

15:56

literature of ancient Greek and ancient

15:58

Rome to suggest that physicians were concerned

16:00

with babies except in exceptional circumstances.

16:04

It was thought that babies in general were left

16:06

to the midwives and the mothers. However,

16:08

Dawson stresses that this is no longer really

16:11

a correct viewpoint, based on numerous examples

16:13

of writings that have come up about say,

16:15

essential diet and hygiene for babies.

16:18

So I think that's interesting, representing

16:21

a shift in our modern understanding

16:23

about ancient views on infants.

16:26

That they were actually sometimes a more relevant

16:28

object of what was considered

16:31

medicine.

16:32

Yeah, there's sort of this, and we'll

16:35

get into it more in just a second. Here but there

16:37

was this understanding of the ancient world

16:40

based on some significant evidence

16:42

that basically the ruling

16:45

male elite were saying, like, babies

16:47

that don't not even worth your time, not

16:50

worth my time anyway, call me when it is old

16:52

enough for me to care about it, or

16:54

if there's if it's exploding, then yes,

16:56

a physician may come and check out the child. That

16:58

sort of thing. Without a doubt, there

17:00

seems to have been far less of a view of

17:03

baby superiority in ancient Greek and

17:05

ancient Rome. Dawson writes

17:07

the following this is great

17:09

quote from Hippocrates. To late antiquity,

17:12

babies and toddlers are defined as a category

17:14

of beings with a special morphology

17:17

and physiology. These characteristics

17:20

are on the whole negative. Newborn

17:23

babies are generally described as imperfect,

17:26

weak, and ugly.

17:28

Wow perfect yes, oh

17:30

no. This reminds me of the story you've

17:33

shared many times of your son calling

17:35

the cat a stupid baby

17:37

or just a baby.

17:38

Maybe when it was just baby, like baby

17:40

is an adjective baby mochi and

17:43

just a solid burn. As a toddler, it's

17:46

like.

17:46

Peak insult, imperfect, weak and

17:48

ugly.

17:49

Yeah yee toddlers

17:51

get it, and so

17:53

did the grown learned men

17:56

of ancient Greece. So

17:58

Dawson points a few specific authors to underline

18:01

these views. So Aristotle

18:03

wrote that babies quote are born

18:05

in a more imperfect condition than any

18:07

other perfected animal, and also

18:10

that they have poor eyesight.

18:11

Oh well, it depends on what Aristotle

18:13

means by that. I'm not sure the full context,

18:15

but if he's making a distinction

18:17

between human beings and other animals,

18:20

I think that's a fair observation

18:22

that human babies are more

18:25

helpless than the newborns of most

18:27

other animal species.

18:29

Yeah. Absolutely, I think that's what he's going

18:31

for here. There's another work

18:33

on colors that is sometimes attributed

18:36

to Aristotle, and in this it's pointed out that

18:38

babies are ugly because or well, it's

18:41

I'm not sure it says ugly, but it points out

18:43

that they're's Essentially, they're ugly because they have

18:45

red faces and little hair.

18:49

Do you ever get the feeling that like Aristotle

18:51

might have been writing about human babies the

18:53

same way he was writing about like stingrays.

18:57

It's just like this is something he's observed

18:59

a couple of times and made a few notes

19:01

about.

19:02

Yeah, I mean I've seen some pretty hairy little babies

19:04

before, so I mean they think it ferries.

19:07

Yeah, but yes, on the whole

19:09

they tend not die guess half of like a full head

19:11

of hair or certainly a proper beard. Now.

19:14

Galen was one of numerous physicians to comment

19:16

on the seeming wax like malleability

19:18

and weakness of the baby. Weakness

19:21

of the baby. Babies are so weak.

19:24

They're they're weak, and they're they're basically

19:26

made out of wax. Like if you don't handle them

19:28

too much or you will change their form completely. They

19:31

do tend to be doe.

19:32

Yeah, that's true. But also Galen,

19:34

I can just tell this guy did

19:36

not spend much time holding a baby because,

19:38

like especially Galen, probably at a beard.

19:41

I've got a beard. When when

19:43

you feel the baby, grab the beard

19:45

and just not leg this. This is the

19:48

handle for the adult, and it will pull

19:50

until it has a fist full of beard hair.

19:52

You do not walk away with the impression of how

19:55

weak babies are.

19:57

Aristotle also recorded that

20:00

many babies die within the first week and are

20:02

therefore not named before this

20:04

period passes. And this is

20:06

a kind of approach to the

20:09

first week or so of a child's life

20:11

that you see reflected in various

20:14

cultures in various times.

20:16

Meanwhile, Plutarch just wonders if

20:18

babies are in fact animals, because they're more

20:21

like vegetables. They're more like a plant.

20:23

I mean, yeah, plants cry

20:25

at midnight, plants poop where they want

20:27

to. That's exactly what a plant is.

20:31

Dason adds this line here quote a

20:33

mineral metaphor substitutes for the

20:35

vegetable one in Chronos's myth,

20:37

who ate his children as soon as they were born

20:40

and thought a stone to be a swaddled

20:42

nursling. So

20:45

you know, is it a baby is it a stone? Like anyone

20:47

can tell the difference?

20:48

I guess yeah. Is that supposed to be a comment on

20:50

how featureless

20:52

and uninteresting babies are? Or is

20:55

that myth supposed to be like a joke

20:57

about Chronos being stupid?

20:59

I mean, granted I was as

21:02

a modern English speaking

21:04

human, I'm not the intended audience,

21:06

I guess for the myth, but I always interpreted it as

21:08

being like he's just so consumed

21:11

with this need to destroy his young.

21:14

You know that he's just like just gobbles them up without

21:16

really tasting them, you.

21:17

Know, Yeah, more like he's

21:19

more machine now than man, almost

21:21

like a he's a baby eating machine. He

21:23

barely notices or has cognizance

21:26

of what's going in his mouth.

21:27

Yeah. So, after expressing

21:29

some of these, again aristocratic

21:32

male opinions on babies

21:35

recorded in the literature, I think it's a good time to stress

21:37

something that another author drives

21:39

home as well. And this is from

21:42

the work of Marine Carrol in Infant

21:44

Death and Burial in Roman Italy from

21:47

twenty fifteen. She points

21:49

out that we base a lot of our understanding of this topic

21:51

on the writings of stoic male, aristocratic

21:54

literary elite, and also the arguments

21:56

that the remains in Roman cemetery

21:59

seem to bear this out. The I think,

22:01

quote unquote invisibility of

22:03

the young child in Roman cemeteries.

22:06

Yeah, and unfortunately this is true about

22:08

a lot of things in the ancient world. When

22:11

you have to consult literary

22:13

texts to get a flavor of ancient life,

22:15

that's necessarily going to be leaving a lot of

22:17

stuff out because of the sexism of like who

22:20

could receive literary education and

22:22

who was writing texts and stuff at

22:24

the time. You're going to get a lot of

22:27

aristocratic male perspective.

22:29

Yeah, and certainly in a factor

22:32

in stoicism, and then

22:34

also the fact that maybe some of them did

22:36

not know how much hair baby had. On the

22:39

on average, you know, it's it's

22:41

it's it's well worth taking into

22:43

account. But

22:45

on the other hand, you do have this this argument

22:48

that lines up with things with the

22:50

writings of say Plutarch, who said that infants

22:52

quote have no part in earth or earthly things,

22:55

and therefore they don't require any

22:57

of the rites normally performed for the

22:59

day. So you

23:02

know, there's just kind of this push and pull

23:04

over like what is the status of the

23:07

infant? And we can understand like this

23:09

like stoic approach that's like, look, there's

23:12

a chance that things aren't going to go

23:14

well, and then therefore one should be

23:16

prepared for that by not fully integrating

23:18

them into

23:20

life essentially. But

23:23

Carroll points out that these views do not necessarily

23:25

represent those of of course other classes or certainly

23:28

mothers during the time period. So

23:30

the seeming invisibility of young children in Italian

23:33

cemeteries of the time period is something that requires

23:35

like further examination and perhaps

23:39

a little more understanding. As opposed to

23:41

just like well, they weren't considered real things. Also

23:44

of note, I was looking at

23:46

a paper from twenty twelve, Child Exposure

23:48

in the Roman Empire by W.

23:51

V. Harris, published in the Journal

23:53

of Roman Studies, pointing out the child exposure

23:56

like the leaving of a child, you know, in the

23:58

wild or out in

24:00

the open, away from humans,

24:03

that this was widely practiced in the Roman Empire,

24:05

often when quote physical viability

24:07

and legitimacy were in doubt, but

24:10

that not everyone agreed with the practice. Stoics

24:12

in particular tended to believe that infants should

24:15

live at the very least if they're

24:17

healthy and legitimate. And certainly

24:19

there's plenty of room for hypocrisy in something

24:22

like that, But I also wonder to what extent it

24:24

backs up or counters the idea that babies

24:26

in general were considered only halfway real.

24:29

Here's another great chunk going back to from Dawson,

24:31

going back to her paper quote for Aristotle,

24:34

infants were defined as a lower category

24:37

of beings physically weak, mentally

24:39

and morally inept, with uncontrolled

24:42

appetites, physical disproportions

24:44

associate them with animals. A

24:47

heavy upper part explains why children

24:49

move like quadrupeds, says Aristotle.

24:52

Quote that is why infants cannot

24:54

walk but crawl about, and at the very

24:56

beginning cannot even crawl, but remain

24:58

where they are, but

25:02

remain where they are. This

25:07

paper from Duston doesn't really get into memory

25:09

all that much. A lot of it is again we're dealing

25:11

more sort of the overarching views of young

25:14

children and infants, But Dustin does

25:16

such on memory as well in this part. Quote

25:18

disproportions also explain mental

25:21

incapacities. The heaviness

25:23

of a large head impairs the impulses

25:25

of thoughts, and the infant's memory

25:28

is bad. Children are further associated

25:30

with inferior categories of human beings,

25:33

such as old people physically weaker

25:36

with a poorer memory and less hair,

25:38

with the insane and the drunk with

25:40

a similar irritable temperament

25:42

and a disorderly behavior, with women

25:45

irrational, changeable and weak, and

25:47

even with dwarfs.

25:49

So you ask what did ancient Greek

25:51

philosophers think about babies?

25:53

And the answer is just a conglomeration

25:56

of offensive opinions.

25:58

Well, yeah, a lot of that is it seems to remain

26:01

in the literature, But that's

26:03

and also stresses that while a lot of this may just

26:05

sound like, you know, babies are gross and the

26:07

worst, there's also plenty of evidence that

26:10

the seeming deficiencies of babies

26:12

were also very much enjoyed. That

26:15

it wasn't just like, oh, man, this baby's like

26:17

an old man. It's more like, oh, this baby's

26:19

like an old man, and the bonding

26:21

still occurred even in times

26:23

of high mortality. Their smiles

26:26

and their skin were written about as being

26:28

irresistible. And also,

26:30

I thought this was neat quote. Myths of baby

26:32

heroes transcend children's

26:34

deaths, and this is something perhaps

26:37

we're thinking about. I don't know, we might get in this in the

26:39

second episode. We might come back at a later time,

26:41

but you do have a lot of baby heroes

26:44

and child gods and godlings

26:46

and various myth and

26:48

folkloric traditions from

26:50

the likes of baby Krishna

26:52

to the Christ Child. But anyways,

26:54

sticking on the topic of memories of the lack thereof

26:57

and small children infants, it would seem

26:59

that you know, of course, the lack of

27:01

memories from one's own infancy

27:03

was very much a known factor, and

27:05

that it would make sense within a viewpoint

27:07

that babies are unfinished and imperfect.

27:10

They have yet to cross through all the stages of becoming

27:12

truly human, becoming you know, truly

27:15

a part of a family

27:17

unit, truly a part of society,

27:19

even if they still amuse us and

27:22

we still have a lot of emotions about

27:24

them.

27:34

Now, we mentioned earlier cultural differences

27:37

that could impact just how early

27:39

one remembers one's life

27:42

are what one's earliest memories happened to be, and

27:44

I was looking at an article titled

27:46

the Culture of Memory by Leo Winterman,

27:49

published by the American Psychological

27:52

Society back in two thousand and five. The

27:55

author here points to research that shows

27:57

that quote the average age of first

27:59

memories up to two years between

28:01

different cultures, and it seems to come down

28:03

to the weight and importance of memory

28:06

within a specific cultural system.

28:08

According to Michelle Leichtmann, PhD,

28:11

cited in the article quote, people

28:13

who grow up in societies that focus

28:15

on individual personal history, like

28:18

the United States, or ones

28:20

that focus on personal family history

28:22

like the Maori will have different

28:25

and often earlier childhood memories than

28:27

people who grow up in cultures that, like

28:29

many Asian cultures, value interdependence

28:31

rather than personal autonomy. So

28:34

a key nineteen ninety four study from psychologist

28:37

Mary Mullen published in the journal Cognition

28:39

as more than seven hundred Caucasian and

28:41

Asian or Asian American undergrads to describe

28:43

their earliest memory. On average,

28:46

Asian and Asian American student memories

28:48

happened six months later. A

28:50

subsequent study and Know there were

28:52

many subsequent studies that examined

28:55

different slices of all this. In

28:59

this case from and found a sixteen month

29:01

gap between Caucasian Americans

29:03

and Native Koreans. These studies

29:06

led to a host of others, and it seems

29:08

to follow the basic social interaction model.

29:11

Quote. According to this model, our autobiographical

29:14

memories don't develop in a vacuum. Instead,

29:16

as children, we encode our memories

29:18

of events as we talk over those events

29:21

with the adults in our life. The more

29:23

those adults encourage us to spin an elaborate

29:25

narrative tale, the more likely we are

29:28

to remember details about the

29:30

event later.

29:31

This absolutely details with much of

29:33

what I've been reading that sort

29:35

of an interactive rehearsal

29:38

of memories helps make those

29:40

memories stronger. But sort of the

29:42

paradox of memory. And this is true not just

29:44

of childhood. I think this is true of adult memory

29:46

as well, is that while that produces

29:49

a stronger memory

29:52

consolidation and you are

29:54

better able to retrieve that memory later, it also

29:56

makes the memory more subject to contamination

30:00

by whatever input you're getting

30:02

from the person you're rehearsing it with.

30:05

Or even from outside sources such

30:07

as advertising. I

30:09

don't know if this is still the case, but many

30:11

years ago I went to the Coca Cola Museum

30:13

here in Atlanta with my

30:15

mother and there was some bit

30:17

of advertising. I'm not sure if it was current advertising

30:20

or past advertising, but the gist of it was

30:22

Coca Cola. We've always been there,

30:25

like we were a part of your essentially

30:27

saying we were a part of all those memories that you hold

30:30

deer and I

30:32

often think think of that when I'm encounter branding

30:35

from this company, because I'm because it's good,

30:37

it's really infectious. It

30:40

does a great job, but it is it is

30:42

kind of like trying to worm its way in there, Like do

30:44

you remember that that great memory from your childhood?

30:46

I bet there was a Coca Cola on the table. And

30:49

even if there wasn't, bam, there is now

30:51

Well.

30:51

You could say it's genius, maybe even insidious,

30:54

the way that they insinuate their branding

30:56

into inherently nostalgic imagery.

30:58

So like the Santa Claus with the Coca

31:01

Cola, Yeah, I think that's not an accident.

31:03

That's like to try to integrate the brand

31:05

with your earliest and best feelings

31:08

from childhood. Oh boy, Christmas is

31:10

coming, here's Santa. And what Santa

31:12

got in his hand a coke? Of course, that's

31:14

just part of the Santa lore.

31:16

Yeah, yeah, so so yeah,

31:18

there's a you could really get into into

31:21

advertising and so forth and

31:24

all of this as well. But yeah,

31:26

so even within a given culture, and they're gonna have this

31:28

sort of different cultural leanings based

31:31

on what sort of emphasis you place an

31:33

individual experience.

31:36

But also there's gonna be there are gonna be differences

31:38

even within a culture based on high

31:41

elaborative and low elaborative mothers.

31:44

And I take this to mean you could basically mean

31:46

any person in an individual's life, but

31:48

they're using mother it's the main example. So basically

31:50

the question is is a child routinely ask

31:53

for detailed stories about their daily life

31:55

or they ask mostly closed questions.

31:59

And this is interesting think about like yeah. Is the

32:01

child asked to like fully explain

32:03

their day or is it just like did you eat lunch today?

32:05

Yes? Did you eat your snack? Yes? That sort of

32:07

thing, and not to say either approach

32:10

is better than the other. Life

32:13

is busy and sometimes you just got to make sure that

32:15

your child ate a snack and you don't need

32:17

the full story. But it is interesting

32:19

to think about, like perhaps the necessity

32:21

for that balance, you know, to get

32:24

a full account of what the day was like, as

32:26

opposed to just like did you do the things that

32:28

were acquired?

32:29

Well, this also connects to some things

32:32

I was reading about how very young children

32:34

can in fact answer questions

32:37

about things that happened to them recently,

32:39

or at least they typically can. This has

32:42

been studied, but one thing I was reading

32:44

was that how well, say, I don't

32:46

know a you know, a two and a half year old can describe

32:49

a memory of a recent event depends

32:52

very much on how you elicit the

32:54

memory from them. And you

32:57

might have seen parents doing this. You

32:59

know, I'm not at that stage yet in parenting,

33:01

but I've seen other parents doing this kind of thing. It's

33:04

like, what did we do on

33:06

your birthday? You know, did we go somewhere?

33:09

Where did we go? And so you can kind of

33:11

like talk the child through

33:13

the memory in a way that it seems

33:15

like the child may not be able to produce

33:18

the details and connect them spontaneously.

33:21

Did that make sense or was that?

33:22

Yeah? Yeah, no, no, It makes me think of other memory

33:24

exercises where like

33:26

if one is having like the tip

33:28

of the tongue scenario, where if someone

33:31

is having if you're having difficulty remembering

33:35

a particular name or whatever, like it's

33:37

better for your memory for you to keep trying to

33:39

guess, or for the person on

33:41

the other end of the conversation to encourage

33:43

you to guess and not to just give it to you. That

33:45

sort of thing, like making

33:48

the brain work for those details.

33:50

That's true. That was a finding at that episode

33:52

we did, wasn't it that? Like you're more likely

33:54

to remember the detail you're

33:56

searching for next time if

33:58

somebody gives you a hint. Can you make the connection

34:01

yourself versus if you just look up the answer?

34:03

Yeah?

34:04

Absolutely. Anyway, and all this, I think it is

34:06

important to mention something that Michelle Likeman

34:08

points out here, and that is again that

34:11

there's not a wrong direction in any of

34:13

this, the brain remembers what it

34:16

needs to remember. We remember what we need to remember.

34:18

Social pressure contributes to this, but

34:21

it is what it is now.

34:23

One question I thought we should look at

34:25

before we wrap things up today

34:28

is like, Okay, we keep talking in

34:31

more general terms about like, well, there's an

34:33

earlier period where most people

34:35

can't really produce any memories from

34:37

that period of their lives, and then a later period

34:39

where they can. But what are the actual numbers,

34:41

like when does that kick in? This is

34:44

something that has been studied extensively.

34:47

There are certainly different methods, and I think we

34:49

might be able to add some nuance to this answer

34:52

later on, but it seems to me like

34:55

the sort of magic age

34:57

is like three to four years. About

35:00

three and a half years is

35:02

what most studies have converged on.

35:05

And to be clear, also, when we talk about childhood

35:08

amnesia in the scientific literature,

35:10

it seems often to refer to two different

35:13

things that are related. One is the

35:16

loss of all memories as

35:18

far as we can tell, from before

35:20

the earliest memory we can produce.

35:23

And then the second thing is the relative

35:26

scarcity of memories from the

35:28

early years of childhood compared

35:30

to equivalent spans of time from

35:33

later in life. So, for example,

35:35

even though you have some autobiographical

35:39

memories from ages six

35:41

to seven, if you are like most people,

35:44

you will have a fewer number of

35:46

spontaneous memories that you can recall

35:48

from that period than from say,

35:51

sixteen to seventeen. And

35:54

I thought it was also interesting to just look

35:56

at the different experimental methods for trying to

35:58

find out what people's earliest memory are.

36:01

There are a number of ways to approach this.

36:03

Sometimes it's done by, say, just asking

36:06

people to describe their earliest memory and

36:08

estimate at what age it took place. That

36:10

is, of course a perfectly good place to start,

36:13

but putting aside for a moment the question of

36:15

like the accuracy of these memories, you

36:17

could imagine reasons why

36:19

just asking somebody what is your earliest

36:22

memory might not actually produce their

36:24

earliest memory. For one thing, most

36:27

people don't keep their memories indexed

36:29

in a sortable form. You know, it's not an Excel

36:31

sheet that has a sort by column for date.

36:35

And so you may have a memory that

36:37

occurs to you in one moment as the earliest

36:39

you can remember, but how do you know in another

36:41

circumstance, you wouldn't think of an earlier

36:44

one that just didn't occur to you at that time.

36:46

Yeah. Plus, I guess it's worth considering

36:49

that in many, but certainly not all

36:51

cases, you have sort

36:53

of a stability to early

36:55

childhood. Certainly that is

36:58

desired that there

37:02

would be sort of a sameness to a lot of the early

37:04

memories. You know, it's like you

37:06

know one or both parents are there, perhaps

37:09

the immediate physical

37:11

surroundings are the same. So,

37:14

like, what is going to be present in a memory

37:16

to distinguish it and set it apart

37:18

in the timeline again, unless you go back

37:20

later and then you have encoded it

37:22

and then you identify it, maybe falsely,

37:25

and say, oh, well, this is a memory of, say when

37:27

we lived at this house or when we lived in this town.

37:30

Yeah, And that raises important questions

37:32

about like the characteristics

37:34

of what counts as a memory, Like

37:37

I wonder if there's a sort of boundary being established

37:39

by the terms of the demand for recall.

37:42

For example, an autobiographical

37:44

memory needs to be something you can put

37:46

into words and explain to somebody

37:48

else. But do you ever get

37:50

that feeling that you're experiencing

37:52

nostalgia, but it's not for

37:55

a thing in the outside world.

37:57

Maybe not for an image or an event,

37:59

but something that isn't

38:01

really something you can put into words. It's

38:03

like nostalgia for an internal

38:06

state or a feeling that's

38:08

kind of strange thing. I sometimes have that

38:11

sensation. Of course, when I have that

38:13

feeling, it's totally possible the

38:15

memory component of the sensation

38:18

of nostalgia could be illusory.

38:20

But sometimes I wonder if maybe feelings

38:23

like that could be based in really old memories

38:25

that can't be put into words or

38:27

something.

38:28

Yeah, I'm having trouble remembering

38:32

a specific example of this, but I think

38:34

some of my early memories

38:36

definitely have this component to them. Even

38:38

if I do remember like a basic setting or

38:41

event around them, there is like a

38:43

there is at least as strong the feeling

38:45

of what it meant. Like. There's one particular

38:48

early memory I have of like running

38:50

around in circles in a living room, around like a

38:52

dinner, like a dining room table in

38:54

a living room or a dining room that just seemed

38:57

enormous, you know, like a cathedral, And

39:00

so part of it is like these vague memories

39:02

of what this space looked like,

39:05

but it's also equally met by

39:07

the exhilaration that is remembered of

39:09

just kind of like this, you know, this running

39:11

around And it is hard to really explain, like

39:14

give what that means, because if I were to run around in circles

39:16

right now, it would certainly not be the same feeling.

39:18

You know, it doesn't relate to other

39:21

memories of physical exertion from other points

39:24

in my life.

39:24

Oh. But then, to come back to other methods

39:27

to study early memories, another one

39:29

that seems to be used fairly often is the

39:31

word Q test. So this one's

39:34

pretty interesting. I say

39:36

a word to you, and then I ask you to

39:38

tell me a memory associated with

39:40

this word. Just any memory. We

39:42

could try it right now, rob, do you want

39:45

to do it, cheer, let's do it. Okay,

39:47

tell me a memory associated with the

39:49

word jar.

39:51

Oh, that's easy. I have an early

39:53

memory of trying to get a jar

39:55

of Maraschino cherries out of the refrigerator

39:58

by myself, and I dropped it and broke it or

40:00

spilled it. I'm not sure if I broke it or spilled it, but that

40:03

is a strong early memory of.

40:05

Mine, Okay. And then from here in the experiment.

40:07

I might ask you for some subsequent details,

40:09

like you know, who was there, did

40:12

anybody else witness this memory?

40:14

Et cetera, et cetera, And then I would also ask you estimate

40:17

what age you were when this memory happened.

40:19

But what age do you think it was?

40:22

I would say maybe

40:24

maybe three, But that's

40:26

just a real that's a huge

40:29

guess. And I think I've actually asked my mother

40:31

about this memory before. And you

40:33

know, this is the kind of thing where like kids have

40:36

things like this happen all the time, they don't necessarily,

40:39

it's not necessarily something a parent is going to specifically

40:41

remember. It makes more of an impact

40:43

on the child than the parent. So

40:46

I have no idea exactly when this occurred.

40:48

Okay, but this is a good answer. Jar of cherries

40:50

on the floor, maybe spilled, maybe broken. You

40:52

think you were around three? So I keep

40:55

doing this. I do this for a big list of

40:57

words, maybe with a big sample of

40:59

people, and then you can sort of cross

41:01

reference all of the answers. You get to look

41:04

at what ages the memories

41:06

tend to come from. And you

41:08

could see by this method that of just

41:10

making up random numbers here, but say by

41:13

randomly associating memories with words,

41:15

we end up with people telling us about twenty

41:17

percent more memories from ages

41:19

sixteen to twenty than from ages

41:22

six to ten or something. So I

41:24

think that's a pretty clever method. But anyway,

41:27

what this research tends to converge on is

41:30

that a really important time is roughly

41:32

the age three to four, or

41:34

like three and a half. Generally,

41:36

the earliest memories that adults can

41:38

produce are around the ages of

41:40

three to four, and there is not

41:43

much or nothing from before that, and

41:45

then after that there is a gradual

41:48

increase in the quantity of

41:50

autobiographical memories from each

41:52

year of age up until maybe

41:55

like seven or eight, when the autobiographical

41:57

memory stores starts to look more like that the

42:00

rest of adulthood. So for most

42:02

people looking backwards, memories tend

42:04

to start around three or four, and

42:06

then you get more of them at five, more

42:08

of them at six, more of them at seven,

42:11

more of them at eight, and then you start to reach

42:13

a more kind of complete

42:15

adult memory set. Now,

42:18

this doesn't necessarily mean that children before

42:20

the age of three or four produce no

42:23

autobiographical memories. Instead,

42:25

it seems like there may be a sort of period

42:28

of forgetting, and I thought this was

42:30

very interesting. Just one

42:32

study I wanted to mention quickly that

42:35

gets at this. It was published in the journal

42:37

Memory in two thousand and five by Dana Van

42:40

Abama and Patricia Bauer,

42:42

and it's called Autobiographical Memory

42:45

in Middle Childhood Recollections of the

42:47

Recent and Distant Past. Now,

42:49

I was looking for the full text of the study and I couldn't

42:51

find it before we recorded today, but

42:53

I did find a summary of the findings in a

42:57

Psychology Today article by

42:59

an author named Vitelli. And

43:01

basically what happened in the study

43:04

is that children were interviewed

43:06

about autobiographical events along

43:08

with their mothers at the age of three, and

43:11

they produced details about those events.

43:13

So something they did, you know, a trip

43:15

out to do something, and they could

43:17

recall things about their own past,

43:19

so they had some form of episodic memory.

43:22

They could be prompted to retrieve details

43:24

about these episodic memories. But those

43:26

same children were brought back

43:28

years later at ages seven, eight,

43:30

and nine, exactly the range

43:33

at which there seems to be a profound

43:36

forgetting of early childhood memories.

43:39

So from vitelli summary here, the

43:41

seven year olds could recall sixty

43:44

percent of the same autobiographical

43:46

events they were called at three, but

43:48

the eight and nine year olds could only recall

43:51

thirty six and thirty eight percent of

43:53

events, So there seems

43:55

to be a major drop off of

43:58

memories from this early period

44:01

around the ages of seven, eight, and nine.

44:04

Yeah, I think this kind of matches up with some

44:06

stuff I've observed with my

44:08

own son, mostly in talking about

44:10

things that we watched together when he was

44:13

in like one age group versus another,

44:16

so and and it varies I think from

44:18

picture to picture, Like there's some movies that maybe

44:20

we've we've talked about more that

44:22

have become more like of sort of a

44:25

regular part of one's life, and then there are other

44:27

movies where you like watch it, forget it, and then

44:29

maybe truly forget it and then come back

44:31

and experience it again.

44:33

Now, why patterns like this emerge is

44:35

something I think we'll have to get into more when

44:37

we come back in subsequent parts of the series.

44:39

I'm not sure how many we're going to go to. We'll have at least

44:41

one more part, maybe maybe a couple more.

44:43

Yeah, there's certainly going to be a plenty to get into

44:45

for a part two, possibly a

44:48

part three, But as we often

44:50

have pointed out, we're we're hesitant

44:52

to say this will definitely go to a certain

44:54

number of episodes because we're

44:56

often just a little unsure where we're going to cut it

44:58

off. Well, how about you, Joe's we close

45:01

out this episode. What's what comes to mind

45:03

is your earliest jar related memory?

45:05

Jars only, please, and if it even

45:08

if it's from the last five years, that's cool too.

45:11

Well to bore you with dreadful cliche.

45:13

I think catching fireflies in a jar that

45:16

is very early. We did that a lot when I

45:18

was a kid in our front yard. We had lots of them.

45:21

I think I also have

45:25

very early memories of pickle

45:28

jars, because I recall from

45:30

early childhood being really into

45:32

pickles pickled cucumbers, like

45:34

a like a Clawson's pickle jar.

45:37

Oh oh yeah, that's interesting. Yeah,

45:39

clearly I had more I guess the sweet tooth as

45:41

a child, but my

45:43

son has always been super into pickles of

45:45

all different varieties, from the

45:47

the little cornishans to the big

45:50

dill pickles, to the big bread

45:52

and butter pickles, to the slices, all

45:54

of it.

45:55

Though with both of those, I guess those are just sort

45:57

of like ambiguous continue

46:00

states of childhood. Catching fireflies

46:02

in jars. It's just something that happened often.

46:04

I don't remember a particular instance

46:07

of it. Same with admiring the pickle jar

46:09

and wanting its contents. If

46:12

I had to produce a more I

46:14

don't know, a direct autobiographical specific

46:17

memory, it'd probably be a more recent one. I

46:19

don't remember. If I think you asked me for my earliest

46:22

but if I were just doing the wordqu test, i'd

46:24

probably say, oh, from when I was

46:26

thirty five and I made

46:29

and I made kim chi and a large jar on

46:31

my table, and I remember how it smelled

46:33

and all that.

46:34

Oh nice. Well, you know, I

46:37

think it's worth telling

46:39

everyone, like, go out now and create

46:41

some positive jar based memories with

46:43

your children, even if they're

46:45

grown now. It's

46:47

never too late to create a jar based memory.

46:50

All right. Well, on that note, we're going to go and close up this episode,

46:52

but we'll be back with more on this topic,

46:54

and in the meantime, certainly right in with your

46:57

thoughts on all of this, and yeah, if you want

46:59

to share some of your earliest memories

47:01

with us and sort of attempt to

47:04

define when these memories

47:06

occurred, and if you have any, if

47:09

you've been able to dig around and to

47:11

ask other people to sort of prove

47:13

them out, to see if they are in fact

47:15

largely authentic or if they've been augmented

47:17

in any way. Yeah, we'd love to hear.

47:19

From everyone throughout these episodes, but

47:22

this is going to produce a skewed sample because we're

47:24

going to hear from everybody who's like, I can remember

47:26

being one, But people aren't going to write in to tell

47:28

us I don't remember being one.

47:30

No, right, you can write in with that if you're like,

47:33

my earliest memory is being you

47:35

know, five or older whatever,

47:37

right in. Like we said, there is no wrong answer

47:39

here. The people who claim to remember

47:42

being born, it doesn't mean their

47:44

brain is better, their memory is better

47:47

than another individual. Again, we're

47:49

going to continue to discuss this as as

47:52

we explore this topic. No wrong answers,

47:55

all right, Yeah, so we close it out. Will

47:57

just remind you that core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish

47:59

on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast

48:02

feed on Mondays. We do listener mail. On Wednesdays,

48:04

we do a short form Monster Factor Artifact episode,

48:06

and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns

48:09

to just talk about a weird

48:11

film and oh and this

48:13

week, I think it's going to be a pretty fun one that will

48:15

tie in with early childhood

48:17

memories for many people, because I think we do form a

48:20

lot of early childhood memories based

48:22

on movies we're exposed to. So

48:24

perhaps we'll get into a bat a little bit as

48:26

we discussed this week's title.

48:28

Huge Thanks to our audio producer JJ

48:30

Posway. If you would like to get in touch with

48:32

us with feedback on this episode or

48:34

any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

48:37

or just to say hello, you can email

48:39

us at contact at stuff to Blow

48:41

your Mind dot com.

48:51

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48:53

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48:57

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