Strategies for dating earliest memories

Abstract

Young adults recalled and dated their five earliest memories, and dates compared with independent parental dates. Participants also provided information about how they derived dates through a "thinking aloud" procedure. All participants were also asked if they had experienced various landmark events when young.One group, the Priming cohort, was asked about potential landmark events prior to memory retrieval while the other group, the No Priming cohort, was asked after memory retrieval. The most frequently used dating strategies were seasons, landmark events, school year, special occasions, known dates, and guessing. Of these, only landmarks and known dates improved dating accuracy in both groups.Furthermore, priming landmarks led to more memories with known dates and a tendency to increase landmark use. This study was the first to show how people attempt to date their earliest memories, and suggests that dating accuracy may be able to be improved.

Gremlins in childhood amnesia research.

“…A large literature demonstrates that people in general are poor at dating their memories, regardless of from which time period in their lives they are retrieving memories (Brewer, 1988; Friedman, 2004; Thompson et al, 1996; Zwartz & Sharman, 2013). Of course, some memories are dated accurately because they have known dates (e.g., birth of a sibling, graduating from high school, starting a new job), and others can be dated by using landmark events with known dates as reference points (Arbuthnott & Brown, 2009; Loftus & Marburger, 1983; Peterson et al, 2022; Sahin-Acar & Gülgöz, 2020; Zwartz & Sharman, 2013). But dating errors are common for many other memories.…”