Last year I experienced a vivid example of how memory shifts and morphs over time. I revisited a fairly famous geological site where I had spent three days collecting rare fossils about fifty years ago. My memory of the place was extremely clear because my brothers and I had gotten a new car stuck in the mud there, and I remembered (or thought I remembered) the road, the hills, the low area where the car got stuck, the slope of the grade upon which we had placed wooden planks for the car to get traction, an old abandoned farmhouse where we had spent the night, the intersection of roads leading to the site, and the entrance to the fossil-collecting gorge--a miniature grand canyon in the middle of a corn field. I had a very clear picture in my mind of what the entire area looked like, so I was shocked when I returned to the site and couldn't find a single thing that looked familiar. Nothing. Nada. Nil. There were no hills where I remembered them, no curves in the road where I remembered them, no intersection of roads where I remembered it or in the configuration I remembered, and the entrance to the gorge looked entirely different than I remembered it. I spent two hours walking around trying to find something--anything--that looked familiar, without success.
I had read studies concerning how memory changes with time, but that experience confirmed for me how radically memory can change, and how unreliable it is. I have also had the experience where other people and I remembered a particular event in completely different ways. Consequently, I am extremely suspicious of stories that people tell about memories dating from their first five years of life. I suspect that their memories are primarily things that their imagination has constructed, projected, or morphed based upon both the original events and susequent ideas and images dating from that time (such as old photographs, parental remembrances, etc).
I had read studies concerning how memory changes with time, but that experience confirmed for me how radically memory can change, and how unreliable it is. I have also had the experience where other people and I remembered a particular event in completely different ways. Consequently, I am extremely suspicious of stories that people tell about memories dating from their first five years of life. I suspect that their memories are primarily things that their imagination has constructed, projected, or morphed based upon both the original events and susequent ideas and images dating from that time (such as old photographs, parental remembrances, etc).
