From these descriptions, the researchers then examined the content, language, nature, and descriptive detail of respondents’ earliest memory descriptions, and from these evaluated the likely reasons why people claim memories from an age that research indicates they cannot be formed.
As many of these memories dated before the age of 2 and younger, the authors suggest that these fictional memories are based on remembered fragments of early experience – such as a pram (or stroller), family relationships and feeling sad – and some facts or knowledge about their own infancy or childhood which may have been derived from photographs or family conversations.
“For this person, this type of memory could have resulted from someone saying something like ‘mother had a large green pram.’ The person then imagines what it would have looked like. Over time these fragments then becomes a memory and often the person will start to add things in such as a string of toys along the top,” Shazia Akhtar, first author on the study and Senior Research Associate at the University of Bradford added.
“Crucially, the person remembering them doesn’t know this is fictional,” Akhtar noted. “In fact when people are told that their memories are false they often don’t believe it."
