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WHAT IS YOUR earliest memory? Mine is my third birthday party. I remember getting a xylophone – it was bright, colourful and made a lot of noise. I sat beside the Christmas tree playing with this great new toy, my back to all my little party guests.
If you think back to your earliest memory you might come up with something similar to mine (well, maybe minus the xylophone, the noise and the antisocial behaviour…) but you might find your earliest memories start about the same age. Is this when we first start to form memories? Do we need to reach a sufficient level of cognitive and language skills to do so? Apparently not…
Studies have shown that we do form memories from a much younger age, however these memories can be lost as we age, so, effectively our earliest memory milestone keeps moving. Children as young as two or three may give valid events as their earliest memories but they may not be able to recall these memories if asked again a few years later. So when do our set of early memories settle down to what we carry into adulthood? Usually by the age of ten.
Why do most of us have our earliest memory from an event around the age of three…
Studies are ongoing with regard to what factors may influence our earliest memories but some interesting facts have emerged such as suggestions that females tend to have earlier memories than males and that there does not seem to be any bias towards positive or negative memories. Also, we are as likely to report our earliest memory being of a mundane nature (like me and my xylophone) as of a significant event.
Some research that I found particularly interesting was the influence of culture on the age of earliest memory. In cultures that promote discussion with children from a young age about themselves and their feelings and thought, earlier memories are more likely to be reported. This is particularly true for cultures that put a strong emphasis on the past (such as New Zealand Maori). However, Asian cultures tend to put less influence on a child as an individual and more on a group or national mentality, and these cultures tended to report an older age for first memories.
What about you – what’s your earliest memory? Let us know in the comments below.
Dr Naomi Lavelle is a mum to three junior scientists who are always asking “how”, “why” and “what if”. She blogs at Science Wows where she aims to answer all their questions, one post at a time. She can also be found on Facebook and as @sciencewows on Twitter.
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Ah it’ll never catch on.
New technology into the civil service!…ching ching.
Probably still paying €36,000 a year lease on the equipment, And they will start using it after the 1980s tender is agreed.
And they still complain and look for more money any time they make them use new technology or do anything to speed up the actual process
That keyboard you use every day. It was me. I am the inventor.
The QWERTY keyboard was introduced to slow typists (good typists!) down. With the original alphabetical version, the keys kept getting jammed. Bring in computers and everyone is so used to QWERTY (or in Europe AZERTY) that changing it now would cause total chaos
That makes no sense. If the alphabetical typewriter was slowing everything down by jamming then surely the qwerty keyboard increased the amount of documents by not jamming. You even mentioned this fact.
The qwerty keyboard was brought in because with an alphabetic keyboard there was an over reliance on one hand, so they randomised the key orientation.
The qwerty keyboard separates letters that are used more often together thus reducing jams in the original typewriter
Typical. Bring in the technology first and then train people to use it. The other way around and we wouldn’t be reading this article.
The government brought in water charges in the last few years too and neither civil servants or the rest of us were too happy. It’s their job to piss people off every few years
Indeed dessie, there’ll be an article in 30 years time about water charges… and people will wonder why there was such a fuss.
@Malvolio32: And why other countries followed the Irish lead. Imagine wasting billions on metering.
This article has events slightly out of order… email wasn’t “the future” in the 1986… email was invented (CTS mail, unix mail, ARPNET) in the 60′s and already in usage in the 70′s.
And then Windows 95 came along and everyone got to do their own typing. Well maybe not everyone…
Productivity and civil service in the same sentence.
Is it the 1st of April already.
Lame
SMALL STORY JOURNALISTS NOT TOO HAPPY AFTER BEING REPLACED WITH AI GOOGLE ANDROID APP
@Donal Proctor: You ok, Hun?
Marvelous! You?
Bid deal in the then Dept of Public Service in 1976 over the purchase of IBM Golf Ball typewriters for Embassy Staff. It had to be approved by the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs . No sign of computers bin those days as all calculations were carried out by adding machines which could not carry out division or multiplication calculations.
How things have changed!
@Irish big fellow: In other Depts. at that time purchase of golfball typewriters which were a typists dream required sanction from the Dept. of Finance
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