research paper about childhood memories

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The fate of childhood memories: children postdated their earliest memories as they grew older.

• 1 Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
• 2 Department of Psychology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NF, Canada

Childhood amnesia has been attributed to the inaccessibility of early memories as children grow older. We propose that systematic biases in the age estimates of memories may play a role. A group of 4- to 9-year-olds children were followed for 8 years, recalling and dating their earliest childhood memories at three time points. Although children retained many of the memories over time, their age estimates of these memories shifted forward in time, to later ages. The magnitude of postdating was especially sizable for earlier memories and younger children such that some memories were dated more than a year later than originally. As a result, the boundary of childhood amnesia increased with age. These findings shed light on childhood amnesia and the fate of early memories. They further suggest that generally accepted estimates for people’s age of earliest memory may be wrong, which has far-reaching implications.

Introduction

Most people can remember their childhood experiences from about 3 or 4 years of age but not earlier, a phenomenon commonly termed childhood amnesia ( Pillemer and White, 1989 ; Bauer, 2007 ; Peterson, 2012 ). Although retrospective research on adults’ earliest childhood memories is abundant, prospective research on children’s earliest childhood memories is relatively scarce. The developmental data are critical, however, in unraveling the mechanisms that produce childhood amnesia and further identifying factors responsible for early memory development. In particular, what happened to the memories for events that occurred in the first years of life?

One commonly held theoretical view is that early memories are destined to become inaccessible or forgotten as children get older and that this eventually results in childhood amnesia ( Bauer, 2007 ; Peterson, 2012 ). In support of this view, cross-sectional studies of children’s childhood recollections have observed an increase in the age of earliest memory with age, whereby older children and adolescents recall their earliest memories from later ages than do younger children ( Peterson et al., 2005 , 2009 ; Jack et al., 2009 ; Tustin and Hayne, 2010 ). Existing prospective research has also shown that early memories of children exhibit a constant rate of forgetting characterized by the exponential function, which results in a shrinking pool of memories available for later retrieval ( Bauer and Larkina, 2014 ).

However, not all early memories are lost to recollection over the course of development. Given that much of the memory faculty has been in place by preschool age and that young preschoolers are often able to recall events occurring months or even years ago ( Nelson and Fivush, 2004 ; Bauer, 2007 ; Peterson, 2012 ), it is possible that some of the early memories may remain accessible as children grow older. Indeed, Peterson et al. (2011) observed in a longitudinal study of earliest memories that 43.6% of preschool through teenage children produced overlapping memories between two interviews spanning across a 2-year period. This finding is critical: it suggests that childhood amnesia may not be a mere result of an obscured period of life and that there may be other explanations.

To explore the possibility, Wang and Peterson (2014) conducted two prospective studies in which they asked 4- to 13-year-olds children to recall and date their earliest memories at two time points, with a 1-year or 2-year interval. Consistent with the earlier observation ( Peterson et al., 2011 ), they found that many memories remained accessible over time. However, children postdated these memories to significantly older ages as time went by, especially memories from earlier years of life. Thus, although children continued to remember many of the same events as their earliest memories, the location in time of the memories shifted to an older age. Wang and Peterson (2014) suggest that this may eventually result in a period of childhood “amnesia” from which no memories are dated, instead of no memories able to be recalled.

These findings are in line with general research on memory dating. Studies have shown that when people recall and date distant memories from their lives, they often make telescoping errors: They postdate the memories as if the events have happened more recently than they actually have, which resembles the situation where an object appears closer in distance when viewed through a telescope ( Loftus and Marburger, 1983 ; Rubin and Baddeley, 1989 ; Janssen et al., 2006 ). Telescoping has been explained in terms of the smaller or less complete retention for distant memories, which are then dated with less precision than more recent events ( Huttenlocher et al., 1988 ; Rubin and Baddeley, 1989 ). Conceivably, childhood memories may be particularly prone to telescoping errors given their decreased retention with elapsed time ( Pillemer and White, 1989 ; Bauer, 2007 ), and children may be particularly vulnerable to telescoping errors due to their limited knowledge of time and memory dating strategies ( Friedman, 2005 ; Wang et al., 2010 ; Pathman et al., 2013 ; Pathman and Ghetti, 2014 ). Although studies with different age groups have demonstrated the malleability of earliest memories ( Wang et al., 2004 , 2010 ; Wang, 2006 ; Peterson et al., 2011 ; Kingo et al., 2013 ), the studies by Wang and Peterson (2014) are the first to identify systematic telescoping errors over time in the dating of earliest childhood memories.

Thus, the prospective studies by Wang and Peterson (2014) provide the initial evidence for an alternative explanation for childhood amnesia. Nevertheless, given the limited 1-year and 2-year intervals between interviews, the findings are inconclusive. Will children continue to remember and postdate their memories after a prolonged period of time? Will the memory age estimates become stabilized at some point over the course of development? We investigated these intriguing questions in the present study. In the sample of 125 children of Wang and Peterson (2014) , we were able to locate 37 children 8 years later after the initial interview. Thus, we were able to follow this small group of 4–5, 6–7, and 8–9-year-olds children for 8 years, examining their recall and dating of their earliest memories at three time points: an initial interview, a 2-year follow-up, and an 8-year follow-up. We expected that children would continue postdating their memories with elapsed time. On the other hand, we expected that as children grew older, memory age estimates might become part of their memory or personal “knowledge” (e.g., “I was three and a half when my parents took me to Paris the first time”) and thus stabilized. This, coupled with increasing memory retention and memory dating strategies ( Friedman, 2005 ; Bauer, 2007 ; Pathman et al., 2013 ; Pathman and Ghetti, 2014 ), might result in a decrease in the magnitude of postdating among older children and for older memories.

Materials and Methods

Ethical statement.

The Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada approved the study. Parents were asked if they would give permission for their children to participate, and children were asked to give informed assent.

Participants

The sample consisted of 37 children who were interviewed three times about their earliest memories over the course of 8 years. At the initial interview, the children included 13 4- to 5-year-olds (seven girls, M = 5.04 years, SD = 0.66; referred to as the “youngest group” hereafter), 12 6- to 7-year-olds (three girls, M = 6.88 years, SD = 0.66; referred to as the “middle group”), 12 8- to 9-year-olds (five girls, M = 8.94 years, SD = 0.48; referred to as the “oldest group”). At the 2-year follow up, the mean age was 7.80, 9.08, and 11.26 years ( SDs = 0.93, 0.77, and 0.48) for the youngest, middle, and oldest groups, respectively. At the 8-year follow up, the mean age was 14.34, 15.60, and 16.17 ( SDs = 1.52, 2.23, and 1.16) for the three groups, respectively. The children were from primarily White, middle-class families in Newfoundland, Canada and were part of a larger study investigating children’s memory development. Parents gave permission for their children to participate and children gave informed assent.

A female experimenter interviewed children at home. She asked children to think of their three earliest memories. General prompts such as “What else do you remember about that?” were used to probe children to give as much information as possible. Following each memory, children were asked how old they were when the memory event took place, followed by questions to help them narrow down their age estimate into a particular month or small range of months: “How old were you when this happened?” “Do you remember what time of year it was?” “Was it summer or winter?” “Was it near your birthday/Christmas/Halloween?” If children specified a range of months (e.g., “The summer when I was 3”), the midpoint of that range was used.

Two years after the initial interview, children were interviewed again in an identical procedure during which their three earliest memories were elicited. Children first recalled three memories spontaneously, which yielded a mixture of “initial” (i.e., memories recalled at the initial interview) and “new” memories (i.e., memories recalled for the first time at the 2-year interview). To facilitate children’s recall, a cued-recall procedure followed if children failed to spontaneously produce any of the three “initial” memories they recalled 2 years previously. A synopsis of each of the memories was read to them that contained critical information about the event (e.g., “One time someone tripped you at school and you broke the pot that you had just made.”). After each memory was read, children were asked whether this memory ever happened to them and, if they recognized the memory, they were asked to recall and date the memory. To ensure that children were not simply confirming the cued events, three synopses of “lure” events (i.e., memories recalled by other children) were also read to them. Children invariably identified lures as having never happened to them.

Then, 8 years after the initial interview children were interviewed again identically to their prior interviews. They were first asked to recall and date their three earliest memories. If they failed to spontaneously produce any of the “initial” or “new” memories, a cued-recall procedure followed as in the 2-year interview.

Results and Discussion

Among the 37 children, 32 (86.5%; nine from the youngest group, 11 from the middle group, and 12 from the oldest group) recalled and dated at least one “initial” memory at both the 2-year and 8-year interviews ( N = 29) or at one of the interviews ( N = 3). This resulted in a total of 73 “initial” memories being recalled and dated at later time points, on average 2.28 memories per child (16 by the youngest group, 26 by the middle group, and 31 by the oldest group, whereby the youngest group recalled fewer initial memories than did the two older groups at marginal significance, F (2,29) = 2.94, p = 0.07, η p 2 = 0.17). At the 8-year interview, 30 out of the 37 children (81.1%; six from the youngest group, 12 from the middle group, and 12 from the oldest group) recalled and dated at least one “new” memory that they produced 6 years ago at the 2-year interview. This resulted in a total of 55 “new” memories being recalled and dated at the two follow-up interviews, on average 1.83 memories per child (10 by the youngest group, 24 by the middle group, and 21 by the oldest group, whereby the mean number did not differ significantly across groups, F (2,27) = 0.51, p = 0.61, η p 2 = 0.04). The “initial” memories ( M = 42.96 months, SD = 21.60) were significantly earlier than the “new” memories ( M = 55.69 months, SD = 22.30) at the first time when they were recalled, F (1,120) = 12.67, p = 0.0005, η p 2 = 0.08.

Subsequent analyses focused on the age estimates of the “initial” and “new” memories at different time points. Preliminary analyses showed no systematic gender differences, so gender was not considered further. The variability in the timing of follow-up interviews across children did not affect the pattern of results. In line with our previous findings ( Wang and Peterson, 2014 ), spontaneous (24%) and cued memories (76%) showed identical patterns and were pooled together in analysis. Given the small sample size, we included results with p- values close to 0.10. We emphasize the importance of considering effect sizes to appraise the strength of the evidence, which, unlike p- values, are not subject to the influence of sample sizes ( Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1991 ).

Initial Memories

We examined the age estimates of the initial memories across the three time points, with memory as the unit of analysis. Based on prior findings that memory events that occurred before 48 months were particularly prone to postdating ( Wang et al., 2010 ; Wang and Peterson, 2014 ), we examined children’s memories initially dated before (52%) and after (48%) 48 months separately. We conducted a 3 (age group) × 3 (time point) × 2 (initial memory age: before or after 48 months) mixed model analysis on age estimates using SAS PROC MIXED program ( Singer, 1998 ), with age group being a between-subject factor, time point and initial memory age being within-subject factors, and subject being a random factor. There was no significant 3-way interaction ( p = 0.97), which was then excluded from the final model.

There were main effects of time point, F (2,151) = 14.81, p < 0.0001, Δ R 2 = 0.19, and initial memory age, F (1,151) = 89.59, p < 0.0001, Δ R 2 = 0.29, qualified by an Age group × Time, F (4,151) = 3.58, p = 0.008, Δ R 2 = 0.06, and an Age group × Initial memory age interaction, F (2,151) = 2.95, p = 0.057, Δ R 2 = 0.03. Further analyses were conducted with memories from before and after 48 months, separately. As shown in Figure 1 , across all age groups, memories occurring before 48 months were generally postdated at the follow-up interviews, F (2,70) = 13.70, p < 0.0001, Δ R 2 = 0.31. This was particularly true for the youngest group, F (2,21) = 7.91, p = 0.003, Δ R 2 = 0.26, relative to the middle group, F (2,27) = 2.15, p = 0.14, Δ R 2 = 0.05, or the oldest group, F (2,22) = 5.35, p = 0.01, Δ R 2 = 0.26. Memories occurring after 48 months also showed an effect of time point, F (2,69) = 3.19, p = 0.05, Δ R 2 = 0.04, which appeared to be driven solely by the youngest group who tended to postdate memories over time, F (2,4) = 4.03, p = 0.11, Δ R 2 = 0.48.

FIGURE 1. Age of “initial” earliest memories dated at three time points as a function of age group and initial memory age. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

To further test the effects of the initial memory age and the initial child age on the magnitude of postdating, we conducted regression analyses with memory age and child age at the initial interview (both being continuous variables) as predictors and the change in memory age at a subsequent interview (i.e., age estimates at the 2- or 8-year interview – age estimates at the initial interview) as the outcome variable, including subject in the models as a random factor. The initial memory age, t = –2.47, B = –0.35, p = 0.02, and the initial child age, t = –2.00, B = –0.33, p = 0.05, both negatively predicted the magnitude of postdating at the 8-year interview. A similar but non-significant trend also appeared at the 2-year interview for both memory age, t = –1.45, B = –0.12, p = 0.15, and child age, t = –1.31, B = –0.14, p = 0.20. Thus, confirming the findings from the mixed model analysis, earlier memories were postdated to a greater extent than later memories regardless of children’s age, especially as time further elapsed. As well, younger children postdated their memories to a greater extent than did older children, after an extended interval period.

In summary, childhood memories, especially those from earlier years and those of younger children, were subject to postdating over time. As a result, the average age of the very first memories children recalled increased from 35.81 months at the initial interview to 39.96 months 2 years later and to 52.54 months 8 years later. Thus, the boundary of childhood amnesia shifted substantially forward in time over the course of development. This may partially explain why younger children tend to provide earlier childhood memories than older children and adults ( Peterson et al., 2005 ; Jack et al., 2009 ; Tustin and Hayne, 2010 ). It is important to further stress that the actual events being recalled by the children did not shift forward in time – the same events were recalled across the interviews – only children’s dating of them. In other words, the shift forward of the boundary of childhood amnesia is at least in part an artifact of systematic changes in memory dating.

Given that memories from the earlier years of life and those of preschool children are often retained with lesser quality and coherence than more recent memories and memories of older children and adults ( Bauer, 2007 ; Pathman and Ghetti, 2014 ), they were particularly vulnerable to dating errors, consistent with previous findings ( Friedman, 2005 ; Wang et al., 2010 ; Pathman et al., 2013 ; Wang and Peterson, 2014 ). In contrast, the memory age estimates by older children and of later memories seemed to be stabilized over time. This may reflect better memory retention and thus less postdating among older children and for more recent memories. In addition, as children grow older, dating information of earliest memories may be encoded as part of their memory or personal knowledge, which then remains stable thereafter.

New Memories

Next, we examined the age estimates of the new memories first recalled and dated at the 2-year interview and again at the 8-year interview, with memory as the unit of analysis. Memories first dated before (29%) and after 48 months (71%) were examined separately. We conducted a 3 (age group) × 2 (time point) × 2 (initial memory age: before or after 48 months) mixed model analysis on age estimates using SAS PROC MIXED program ( Singer, 1998 ), with age group being a between-subject factor, time point and initial memory age being within-subject factors, and subject being a random factor. The 3-way interaction was not significant ( p = 0.91) and then excluded from the final model.

A main effect of initial memory age emerged, F (1,73) = 37.36, p < 0.0001, Δ R 2 = 0.37, qualified by a Time x Initial memory age interaction, F (1,73) = 4.23, p = 0.04, Δ R 2 = 0.04. As shown in Figure 2 , across all age groups, memories occurring before 48 months tended to be postdated between the 2-year and 8-year interviews, F (1,15) = 2.80, p = 0.12, Δ R 2 = 0.07, whereas memories from after 48 months were not postdated, F (1,47) = 0.14, p = 0.71, Δ R 2 = 0.02. As a result, the age differences between memories before and after 48 months decreased by the 8-year interview.

FIGURE 2. Age of “new” earliest memories dated at the 2-year and 8-year interviews as a function of age group and initial memory age. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

We further conducted a regression analysis to test the effects of memory age and child age at the 2-year interview on the change in memory age by the 8-year interview (i.e., age estimates at the 8-year interview – age estimates at the 2-year interview), including subject in the model as a random factor. Memory age at the 2-year interview negatively predicted the magnitude of postdating at the 8-year interview, t = –2.76, B = –0.27, p = 0.008. Thus, earlier new memories were postdated to a greater extent than later new memories as time went by, independent of children’s age. Children’s age was not a significant predictor of the magnitude of postdating.

Thus, following a 6-year interval, children’s memories were postdated such that the average age of the earliest new memories children recalled shifted later in time, from 49.57 to 54.90 months. Like the initial memories, earlier new memories were particularly prone to postdating whereas later memories remained relatively stable in age estimates over time. Interestingly, there was no age difference among children in the magnitude of postdating for new memories. Because new memories were considerably older than initial memories and were first recalled at the 2-year follow-up when children were all in their middle childhood or beyond, children of different age groups might not differ in their levels of retention ( Bauer, 2007 ; Wang et al., 2014 ) and therefore showed similar levels of postdating.

General Discussion

This prospective study investigated children’s recall and dating of earliest childhood memories at multiple time points over an extended period of time. In spite of the small sample, the effect sizes were comparable with previous studies ( Peterson et al., 2011 ; Wang and Peterson, 2014 ). The cross-sectional longitudinal design allowed us to simultaneously examine the effects of age at encoding, retention interval, and age of children on memory dating. The findings showed that although children continued to remember many of the memories they recalled 8 years ago, they postdated the memories, especially the earlier ones, to considerably later ages as time passed. The memory age estimates seemed to be stabilized among older children and for older memories. The pattern of findings is consistent with both memories recalled at the initial interview (i.e., initial memories) and those newly recalled at the 2-year interview (i.e., new memories). The study further extends Wang and Peterson’s (2014) findings by showing that earliest memories continued to be postdated many years following the previous recalls and that the magnitude of postdating was smaller for older children and older memories. Perhaps over the course of development, the age estimates may eventually be integrated as part of the memory or personal “knowledge” so that later in retrospect we all “know” when our earliest memories took place.

We would like to emphasize our key finding: that young children continued the process of re-dating their memories for several years after the recalled events actually occurred. By the time children were 8 years older than initially, the age of estimated event occurrence was more than a year later. The magnitude of this re-dating is astonishing. This suggests that our accepted knowledge and wisdom (and our textbooks) may be wrong. If the average age of earliest memory identified in current research is 3.5 years and there is systematic mis-dating by a year or more, then people’s earliest memories may actually date from when they were 2-year-olds.

Note that we do not assume that memories were dated with absolute accuracy at the initial interview. It is the postdating of the same memories over time that is of interest. Indeed, children might have already made telescoping errors the first time they were interviewed for the memories. As shown in Wang et al. (2010) , children postdated early memories compared with their parents, and adult studies have shown that memories from the beginning of a life period (e.g., childhood as in the current study) tend to show telescoping errors of postdating ( Loftus and Marburger, 1983 ; Rubin and Baddeley, 1989 ). If the children in the current study were already making telescoping errors from the start, the magnitude of actual memory dating errors might be even larger than what we observed at the follow-up interviews. In addition, it is unlikely that children’s age estimates became more accurate over time, given that dating accuracy declines with retention interval in both children and adults ( Janssen et al., 2006 ; Friedman et al., 2011 ).

The present study spanned across 8 years. It yielded critical findings about the fate of early childhood memories, which have far-reaching implications. Again, we emphasize that the time of occurrence of the events being recalled by the children in this study did not shift forward in time. Rather, children’s dating of those memories shifted. Thus, as we suggested before ( Wang and Peterson, 2014 ), people’s earliest memories may be earlier than they think. Prior reviews of the childhood amnesia literature have suggested that the average age of earliest memories among Western Europeans and North Americans is 3.5 years of age (e.g., Rubin, 2000 ). We suggest that the average age of earliest memories is probably earlier than that, and that distortions in memory dating may have led to erroneous conclusions about when our earliest memories occurred.

Author Contributions

QW analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. CP designed the study, supervised data collection and worked on the manuscript.

This research was supported by Grant 513-02 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to CP; and by Grant BCS-0721171 from the National Science Foundation to QW.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgment

We thank Penny Voutier for her assistance, and the participating children who made the study possible.

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Keywords : childhood amnesia, postdating, earliest memory, memory age estimate, prospective study, telescoping

Citation: Wang Q and Peterson C (2016) The Fate of Childhood Memories: Children Postdated Their Earliest Memories as They Grew Older. Front. Psychol. 6:2038. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02038

Received: 26 October 2015; Accepted: 21 December 2015; Published: 12 January 2016.

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Copyright © 2016 Wang and Peterson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Qi Wang, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Childhood Memory: An Update from the Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

Cite this chapter.

• Dwight J. Peterson M.A., Ph.D. 3 ,
• Kevin T. Jones M.A., Ph.D. 4 ,
• Jaclyn A. Stephens M.S.O.T., Ph.D. 5 ,
• Filiz Gözenman M.S. 5 &
• Marian E. Berryhill Ph.D. 5  

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Children are not simply miniature adults. As such, the memory of a child is significantly different from the memory of an adult. Furthermore, the ability to form memories is not innate and instead develops over the first nearly two decades of life. Consequently, memory researchers working in the developmental domain must carefully design studies to probe memory function using age-appropriate paradigms. This is especially true given the growing range of experimental approaches that can be leveraged to understand the neural underpinnings of memory and its development. Techniques such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and high-density electroencephalography (HD-EEG) join workhorse behavioral and neuropsychological methodologies to monitor many aspects of brain function and behavior during memory formation and retrieval.

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Peterson, D.J., Jones, K.T., Stephens, J.A., Gözenman, F., Berryhill, M.E. (2016). Childhood Memory: An Update from the Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective. In: O'Donohue, W., Fanetti, M. (eds) Forensic Interviews Regarding Child Sexual Abuse. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21097-1_5

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New perspectives on childhood memory: introduction to the special issue

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• 1 a Department of Human Development , Cornell University , Ithaca , NY , USA.
• 2 b Department of Psychology , Koç University , Istanbul , Turkey.
• PMID: 30384823
• DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2018.1537119

This special issue brings together the scholarship that contributes diverse new perspectives on childhood amnesia - the scarcity of memories for very early life events. The topics of the studies reported in the special issue range from memories of infants and young children for recent and distant life events, to mother-child conversations about memories for extended lifetime periods, and to retrospective recollections of early childhood in adolescents and adults. The methodological approaches are diverse and theoretical insights rich. The findings together show that childhood amnesia is a complex and malleable phenomenon and that the waning of childhood amnesia and the development of autobiographical memory are shaped by a variety of interactive social and cognitive factors. This collective body of work will facilitate discussion and deepen our understanding of the dynamics that influence the accessibility, content, accuracy, and phenomenological qualities of memories from early childhood.

Keywords: Childhood amnesia; autobiographical memory; early memory development; forgetting; infantile amnesia.

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• Introductory Journal Article
• Age Factors
• Amnesia / psychology*
• Child Development*
• Memory, Episodic*
• Mental Recall*

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• Published: 30 October 2013

Memory development: implications for adults recalling childhood experiences in the courtroom

• Mark L. Howe 1  

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume  14 ,  pages 869–876 ( 2013 ) Cite this article

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Adults frequently provide compelling, detailed accounts of early childhood experiences in the courtroom. Judges and jurors are asked to decide guilt or innocence based solely on these decades-old memories using 'common sense' notions about memory. However, these notions are not in agreement with findings from neuroscientific and behavioural studies of memory development. Without expert guidance, judges and jurors may have difficulty in properly adjudicating the weight of memory evidence in cases involving adult recollections of childhood experiences.

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How Our Early Childhood Memories Affect Our Present

Childhood memories can vary. There are plenty or few. We may welcome them or avoid them. They can be uplifting or shatter our spirit. Whatever our age, some childhood memories can still feel painful and real. What to do?

“What is your earliest childhood memory?” Whether you have ever been in therapy/counselling, or not, you may have come across that question. Some people have a real dislike for it. “Don’t tell me, all my problems are down to my childhood … I don’t want to talk about the past.” 

I can see the point. Our lives are too complex, our difficulties sometimes too profound to be boiled down to a memory. Yet, the question is not meant to do any of that.

Often the memory that comes to mind, can give us a clue to whatever emotional Achilles heel or vulnerable spot we may have developed and why. Sometimes we may not (consciously or unconsciously) want to remember a lot, or nothing at all comes to mind.

For the purpose of this exercise, let’s ask the question. In case you cannot think of anything, I will volunteer a personal example of one of my early childhood memories.

Let’s think of a childhood memory that can still make you feel uncomfortable and that may still hurt you today.

Let’s see what the memory is about:

who was involved,

how you interpreted it,

how it might have shaped you,

what can trigger the memory and the pain it brings,

and what we can do about it, let it go, put it to rest?

Sounds a bit ambitious and too difficult? Stick with me for a few more minutes.

One of my earliest memories is from when I was aged somewhere between 2-4. I cannot remember, neither can my parents.

I was woken up by thunder and lightning. The room was dark and I was alone. I was shouting and crying, but no one came. I was terrified. I don’t remember much more. But even now, I have a slight sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. And I feel cut off and alone.

I discussed it with my mother many times. Even now, decades later, she remembers it, too. Because I had been so upset.

What had happened?

My mother says it had been a weekday evening, probably some time between 19.00 and 21.00. My parents had gone out for an evening stroll and got caught out by the weather. They had stopped over at the local pub, waiting for the downpour to end.

I know, these days we may not leave little children alone at home. But this was the late Sixties in a small West German town. Still, part of me feels, it was wrong.

My mother tells me she struggled to settle me down again.

What sense do I make of it?

How does this affect me today and how do I deal with it?

Personally, I think this is a story and experience of abandonment . I had felt terrified and alone. No one came to make me feel safe. The people who I had bonded with (my parents) and expected to be there, they had not been there. That is a fact, a real experience.

I felt abandoned and (even as the little child) I would have tried to make sense of it. And I might have tried to take a lesson from it , so I could protect myself in the future.

Perhaps I concluded that the others are not to be trusted .

I might have thought that this had been my fault , that I am not good enough to be loved and taken care of.

I might have decided that I need to cling to the other, because they might want to leave me, and then I will end up feeling frightened again. Later on, I did develop fear around separation at nursery and at school.

At some stage I might have concluded that because others, even those closest to me, cannot be trusted, I need to be self-reliant and best look after myself.

I think my Achilles heel, based on that childhood memory and probably other episodes, is the fear of abandonment and the tendency to assume, that deep down I am better off taking care of difficult situations myself. Others will only disappoint.

In reality, I know this is not so. But sometimes I catch myself thinking as if it is exactly so, and then I behave accordingly.

What triggers childhood memories? 

For me? Not thunder and lightning or being alone in the dark. Strangely enough, I love when thunder happens at night and I love hearing the crackle of lightning.

Whether a happy or difficult memory, triggers can be anything ranging from a smell, a sound, a word, an expression, a touch, a picture, a location, a situation - anything that we have associated with that moment.

My trigger is when I feel disappointed and left alone, just at the moment when I need help most.

More often than not, I can catch the moment, when the old childhood memory with its overwhelming terror, despair and anger sets in.

I try and keep the feeling of the memory separate from the here and now. 

We need to be able to separate between the often so real feelings triggered by the childhood memory and by what is actually happening now.

If we do not do that, then there is a risk, we end up in an echo chamber , where the feelings, ideas and beliefs we have developed from the childhood memory reverberate, get reinforced and start to overwhelm us.

While this is understandable and it does happen, it makes it so much more difficult to deal with the here and now.

My mother is horrified at the idea that she might have done something wrong; that she might have hurt or even ‘damaged’ me.

I don’t blame her. What good comes of that? Nothing. I had to forgive my parents, even though they never set out to hurt me. I try not to dwell too much on it all. And I have stopped being frightened of that particular memory a long time ago.

Painful childhood memories will have influenced who we are today. There is nothing right or wrong about it. It is human and not a failure on our part, if we have them in the first place and if we feel we have not resolved them.

Blaming and feeling angry, those two feelings alone are not enough for us to understand things, work them through and take charge.

When you feel an old painful memory comes alive in you, then why not:

Let it happen.

Accept it as part of your past.

Observe how you feel and how your mind may wonder.

Try and keep the memory separate from “the now”, the current reality and situation you find yourself in, which is different from the past.

It is all the old stuff that is on a roll, like an old film or record playing in our mind and heart.

Karin blog's at Between Self And Doubt .

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Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review

Chris r. brewin.

1 University College London, London, UK

Bernice Andrews

2 Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK

Using a framework that distinguishes autobiographical belief, recollective experience, and confidence in memory, we review three major paradigms used to suggest false childhood events to adults: imagination inflation, false feedback and memory implantation. Imagination inflation and false feedback studies increase the belief that a suggested event occurred by a small amount such that events are still thought unlikely to have happened. In memory implantation studies, some recollective experience for the suggested events is induced on average in 47% of participants, but only in 15% are these experiences likely to be rated as full memories. We conclude that susceptibility to false memories of childhood events appears more limited than has been suggested. The data emphasise the complex judgements involved in distinguishing real from imaginary recollections and caution against accepting investigator‐based ratings as necessarily corresponding to participants' self‐reports. Recommendations are made for presenting the results of these studies in courtroom settings. © 2016 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The early 1990s saw a well‐documented concern that some psychotherapy patients might be wrongly convinced by their therapists that they had experienced sexual abuse in childhood and recover corresponding memories of events that had not occurred (Lindsay & Read, 1994 ; Loftus, 1993 ). The possibility was raised that a variety of suggestive therapeutic techniques could create illusory memories of abuse having happened. Subsequently, experiments were designed that showed false memories of childhood events could be created under laboratory conditions. Although the success of these experiments has been widely accepted, summarising their results accurately is complex because different paradigms and memory measures have been employed, and the findings have been very variable. This may explain why to date there have been no systematic reviews of the research on creating false childhood memories in adults despite undoubted professional and public interest in the topic, as illustrated by a recent special issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology titled ‘Reshaping memories through conversations: Considering the influence of others on historical memories of abuse’. The two aims of this review are to develop a framework for describing the nature of these laboratory‐produced memories and to use this framework to document more precisely what these studies have and have not shown. The review should be of benefit to researchers, experts testifying in legal settings and psychotherapists attempting to evaluate the status of childhood memories in a therapeutic context.

Three experimental paradigms have been most commonly employed to mimic possible therapy‐inspired distortions to childhood autobiographical memory (Laney & Loftus, 2013 ; Schacter & Loftus, 2013 ). In order of the amount of explicit suggestion and apparent corroboration provided to participants, these are the following: imagination inflation studies, in which participants are instructed to repeatedly imagine events that have not occurred; ‘false feedback’ studies, in which participants are given mainly generic false information suggesting they were likely to have experienced an event and memory implantation studies in which the suggested occurrence of the false event is supported by false testimony from an individual's family members or individually doctored photographs. Although the latter two paradigms overlap somewhat, we treat them separately here because they typically differ both in the procedures used and the outcome data (changes in self‐ratings versus investigator‐based ratings). The majority of studies using all three of these paradigms imply the practical relevance of their work by including mention of memory for child abuse or trauma, therapy or legal proceedings.

Some initial reactions to the publication of these studies were to conclude that imagining events that had not happened can ‘change memory’ (Garry & Polaschek, 2000 ) or that it was easy to implant false childhood memories (Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay, 2002 ). More recently, articles have suggested that, on average, false childhood memories can be implanted in almost 40% of participants (Strange, Wade, & Hayne, 2008 ). A State of the Science Editorial (Laney & Loftus, 2013 ) concluded that ‘all these techniques produced false memories in substantial numbers of research participants’ and went on to describe further research that has been ‘key to establishing the reliability of laboratory‐induced false memory, as well as their relevance to the precipitating issue of recovered memories of child sexual abuse’ (p. 139). Other authors (Conway, 2013 ) have concluded that ‘wholly false memories are more common than previously thought, especially for childhood events and, even more alarmingly, it turns out to be almost trivially easy to create false memories in others’ (p. 567).

The findings of this research have also been widely accepted within psychology textbooks, with statements (D. A. Bernstein, 2014 ) such as: ‘Merely thinking about certain objects or events or hearing sounds or seeing photos associated with them appears to make false memories of them more likely’ (p. 223); or (Nolen‐Hoeksema, Fredrickson, Loftus, & Lutz, 2014 ) ‘memories of entirely fictional events have been shown to be implantable under controlled conditions…it is possible to induce such memories by merely having people imagine fictional renderings of their pasts’ (pp. 289–290). In the absence of a systematic review, however, it is unclear whether these statements accurately capture the available data.

One reason for caution is that a number of researchers in the field have observed how studies vary considerably in their definition and operationalisation of false memory (Scoboria, Mazzoni, Kirsch, & Relyea, 2004 ; Smeets, Merckelbach, Horselenberg, & Jelicic, 2005 ). Moreover, discriminating whether one's memories are true or false is a complex process involving high‐level evaluative procedures (Johnson, 1997 ; Lindsay & Johnson, 2000 ). Perhaps as a consequence, the results of studies using all three paradigms have been highly variable. These observations suggest the value of applying an explicit framework to the existing data in order to evaluate the literature. In this article, we describe such a framework grounded in the previous work of autobiographical memory researchers and apply it to the results of the three major methods of suggesting false childhood memories.

A Framework for Discriminating Truth and Falsity in One's Own Autobiographical Memories

The term ‘autobiographical memory’ refers to the totality of what can be recalled about the self and includes knowledge of both facts and events. In thinking about event memory, a useful starting point is the ‘remember‐know’ distinction (Mandler, 1980 ; Tulving, 1985 ) that has been so influential in experimental studies of episodic memory retrieval: Participants can experience their past knowledge of a stimulus event either as a feeling of familiarity (‘knowing’ they have seen it before without retrieving the context) or as a full recollective experience accompanied by sensory images arising from the original context (‘remembering’). With autobiographical memory, individuals can similarly know or believe on the basis of external evidence that an event has occurred (such that they visited New York when aged 2 years) without necessarily having any corresponding recollective experience such as visual images.

Unlike memory for laboratory stimuli, however, for which feelings of familiarity provide the main source of ‘know’ judgments, the belief that an autobiographical event has occurred may rest on a wide variety of additional types of plausibility information either known to the individuals concerned or supplied by others (e.g. pictures of the family visit to New York). Such information is important to evaluate the plausibility of specific recollective experiences. Just as it is possible to know or believe something occurred without recollection, it is possible to have recollection without belief: An example is when a recollective experience such as a visual image is thought to be inaccurate or completely false (Mazzoni, Scoboria, & Harvey, 2010 ; Scoboria et al., 2014 ). Observations of such non‐believed recollective experiences have featured from the start in studies of false memory implantation (Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995 ).

Even if the event referred to in the recollective experience is plausible, the elements of that experience may still be imaginary rather than real. Research on source memory has considered in detail the problems of establishing the truth of one's own recollective experiences and emphasised the complexity of the evaluative processes involved (Johnson, 2006 ). Johnson suggested that a variety of factors are involved, including the amount of perceptual and contextual detail available, the plausibility of what is recalled, the existence of supporting knowledge and beliefs, information about mental operations such as imagination that might provide an alternative explanation and the decision criteria adopted. Based on existing findings, she proposed that false memories are more likely when procedures are used that increase the similarity between true and imagined events, such as those that increase the amount of imagery available, that decrease the accessibility of disconfirming information and that lead to features of real events being imported.

Given these complexities in discriminating whether experiences correspond to true or false events, it has been necessary to stipulate criteria by which researchers can conclude that individuals have fully recollected a particular episode from their past. A prominent view from autobiographical memory research (Brewer, 1986 ) is that three elements are needed: the belief that the episode was personally experienced by the self, the presence of (usually visual) imagery and the confidence that this imagery is a veridical record of the originally experienced episode. Similar criteria have been employed by other leading researchers. Pezdek and colleagues suggested that recollective experiences are only likely to be accepted if the events are initially judged as plausible and consistent with script‐relevant knowledge (Pezdek, Finger, & Hodge, 1997 ). Hyman additionally proposed that the creation of false memories involves the acceptance of the false event as plausible, the construction of an image and narrative of the event and the source memory error of confusing the constructed memory as a personal recollection (Hyman, Gilstrap, Decker, & Wilkinson, 1998 ). A related model (Mazzoni, Loftus, & Kirsch, 2001 ) distinguished between a perception that an autobiographical event is plausible, the belief that it occurred to them and a corresponding recollective experience that is interpreted as a memory.

Empirical research supports the argument that it is important to distinguish between these different kinds of judgement. For example, telling people that certain events, such as receiving an enema, were highly prevalent during their childhood produces greater belief in the possibility of having experienced those events, but not actual memories of the experience (Hart & Schooler, 2006 ; Pezdek, Blandon‐Gitlin, Lam, Hart & Schooler, 2006 ). Similarly, in false feedback studies, increases in the belief that an event has occurred have been noted even in participants who later say they are positive that the event did not happen (D. M. Bernstein, Laney, Morris, & Loftus, 2005b ). Other research has found that whereas perceptual, re‐experiencing and emotional features of an event predict recollective experience but not a belief that the event actually occurred, event plausibility strongly predicts a belief that the event occurred but only weakly predicts recollective experience (Scoboria et al., 2014 ).

Some authors of studies using the three main childhood false memory paradigms explicitly refer to both a belief in an event having occurred and recollective experiences as ‘memories’ (Laney, Fowler, Nelson, Bernstein, & Loftus, 2008 ) and Scoboria et al. ( 2014 ) note that it is often far from easy to distinguish between different types of memory judgement. A problem with studies using investigator ratings of memory accounts is that memory terms are sometimes not understood or used correctly by those taking part in memory studies, and their responses can be affected by ambiguous wording (Smeets et al., 2006 ). For example, Smeets and colleagues (Smeets, Telgen, Ost, Jelicic, & Merckelbach, 2009 ) found that two‐thirds of their participants appeared to endorse having ‘memories’ of non‐existent footage of the assassination of the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, but more detailed questioning determined that in 80% of cases, their statements referred to beliefs rather than recollective experiences. Thus, while to outside observers, there may appear to be a ‘memory’ based on the language used, subjectively the individual may believe the event occurred without having an accompanying recollective experience (Ost, Granhag, Udell, & Roos af Hjelmsäter, 2008 ; Otgaar, Scoboria, & Smeets, 2013 ). Even if there is a recollective experience, this may not be believed (Mazzoni et al., 2010 ; Scoboria et al., 2014 ).

Synthesising this previous body of work, it appears that there is considerable support for the utility of Brewer's ( 1986 ) framework distinguishing three types of memory judgement: (1) a belief that the event occurred (termed here ‘autobiographical belief’); (2) a corresponding recollective experience; and (3) confidence in the veracity of that memory experience (termed here ‘memory confidence’). While autobiographical belief is a component of memory, we suggest that a ‘full’ memory for an event, whether true or false, should ideally rest on the combination of the second and third elements. We refer to recollective experiences that have not been demonstrated to be held with confidence as ‘partial’ memories.

These three types of memory judgement are readily discerned in the literature. Table  1 presents some of the most widely used self‐report measures and investigator‐based (false) memory definitions that have been employed in imagination inflation, false feedback and memory implantation studies. As previously remarked by several authors, most imagination inflation and false feedback studies have primarily assessed autobiographical belief and have had participants rate their confidence that an event has occurred, typically on an 8‐point scale anchored with ‘definitely did not happen’ at one end and ‘definitely did happen’ at the other. Several researchers (Mazzoni et al., 2001 ; Smeets et al., 2005 ) have noted, further, that increases in confidence cannot be assumed to correspond to a belief that an event has occurred if confidence ratings remain in the lower half of the scale (i.e. closer to ‘did not happen’ than to ‘did happen’). Therefore, in summarising the literature, it is important to describe not only the scales that are used but also the mean ratings before and after any intervention.

Main measures and definitions corresponding to autobiographical belief, recollective experience and memory confidence in studies of false memory for childhood events

The self‐report measures used in the imagination inflation and false feedback studies to assess recollective experience generally ask participants to rank their experience on a scale from ‘no memory at all’ to a ‘clear and complete memory’ or to contrast a ‘memory’ with a ‘belief’ that an event happened. These methods rely on participants distinguishing beliefs and recollective experiences, but do not explicitly require participants to describe images or recount narratives, or to consider whether such images are necessarily veridical. Particularly when ‘memories’ are simply being contrasted with ‘beliefs’ in a dichotomous rating, little information is available about the extent of the memory or of the individual's confidence in it.

The memory implantation studies have, in contrast, primarily relied on investigator‐based ratings and have gone to considerable lengths to characterise the nature of participants' response. From the beginning, investigators recognised that many participants were uncertain about their recollective experiences and attempted to distinguish ‘partial’ memories (e.g. memories that were vague, incomplete or not necessarily believed to be real) from ‘full’ or ‘complete’ memories (Hyman et al., 1995 ; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995 ). This has been difficult because of the need to separate participants' memory of what they were asked to imagine by the experimenters, often over repeated sessions, from their depiction of what they believed actually happened to them. For this reason, as shown in Table  1 , several investigators have required participants to elaborate or to produce information additional to what was suggested. However, this additional material also needs to be accepted as true in relation to the suggested event (i.e. ‘memory confidence’ also needs to be assessed).

One of the most stringent formulations has been that of Hyman and Pentland ( 1996 ), who defined ‘clear’ memories as reports of a core aspect of the target event with ‘consistent elaborations and statements that the event was a memory’. Reading the published examples produced by this method (e.g. Hyman & Billings, 1998 ), however, illustrates that even in the case of ‘clear’ memories, participants are sometimes unconfident about their experiences or incorporate elements from their own biography that do not always fit the suggested scenarios. Other investigators have equally recognised that a visual image may not always be classified as an actual memory but have sometimes been less specific about requiring evidence of confidence in memory when defining a ‘full’ recollection, for example, by using as a criterion ‘if the subject appeared to believe he or she was remembering the suggested event’ (Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, & Garry, 2004 ) (p. 151).

Although many individual false memory studies discuss the distinctions between autobiographical belief, recollective experience or memory confidence in relation to their data, these constructs have not been used as a frame of reference for organising and summarising the results of the field as a whole. In the sections that follow, we review the evidence for change in memory for childhood events brought about by each of the three primary false memory paradigms. In seeking to quantify this, we follow the literature in describing the proportion of participants who respond to suggestions and the amount and nature of mean changes on the memory scales employed. Because it is these raw, unadjusted data that best capture the degree of change achieved, a meta‐analytic approach that converted the data into standardised effect sizes would be inappropriate: Instead, we have calculated weighted means that preserve the original metrics. This analytic approach also allows for the fact that the memory implantation studies do not consistently report appropriate contrast conditions from which an effect size could be calculated: Although participants are usually required to recall true as well as false events, when the data are reported, there are generally differences in the numbers of events, the procedures used or the way they are coded, which prevents more general comparison. Meta‐analysis of the imagination inflation and false feedback studies would in any case be of limited value because of the insufficiently frequent inclusion of theoretically relevant moderator variables. As summarised in the tables, the vast majority of the 61 studies included in this review were conducted with young adults in mainly college student populations (only four included older adults): Consideration of false memories in children is beyond the scope of the paper.

Imagination Inflation

Vividly imagining large numbers of words, sentences, actions, and so on can lead to confusion over whether specific words have been spoken or specific actions performed or whether this only happened in the person's imagination. The act of imagining such actions can lead to an increase in the belief that they actually happened (Anderson, 1984 ; Foley, Johnson, & Raye, 1983 ). Researchers applying similar procedures to childhood memories (Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, 1996 ) coined the term ‘imagination inflation’. In the studies to be reviewed, participants typically complete a checklist of distinctive events that might have happened in childhood (such as getting stuck in a tree or putting one's hand through a window), rating them on an autobiographical belief/event confidence scale. Events (usually those rated as unlikely to have occurred) are then assigned either to an ‘imagine’ or a control condition and subsequently re‐rated for likelihood of having occurred. The experimenter typically guides the participants' imagination with specific instructions to focus on different attributes of the ‘memory’, augmented with the requirement subsequently to answer questions about the event as if it had happened, to write in detail about the hypothetical event or both.

A search was conducted on Web of Science, Current Contents and MEDLINE using the topic search term ‘imagination inflation’. To be included, a study had to contain distinct conditions measuring increases in the belief that a childhood autobiographical event had happened after an imagination manipulation and in a non‐imagination (control) condition, report sufficient data to allow these conditions to be contrasted and measure autobiographical belief both before and after the manipulation. Of the 156 potential articles found up to the end of 2015, 12 met the inclusion criteria. Additional hand‐searching of cited and citing references produced a further four qualifying articles, resulting in a total of 16 articles incorporating 19 different datasets. Data were extracted independently and cross‐checked by both authors.

The studies are summarised in Table  2 . In the third column, this details any additional relevant within‐subjects and between‐subjects conditions that featured in the studies over and above the test of the imagination inflation effect. The remaining columns present the results. In the literature, tests of the imagination inflation effect are reported in a number of different ways. Early studies typically reported the percentage of all events that received increased belief/confidence ratings after the intervention, regardless of the magnitude of the increase, divided by whether they were imagined or not imagined. This method, which collapses datapoints across events and participants, gives an indication numerically of whether any imagination inflation has occurred. However, unlike within‐subjects designs in which the participant remains the unit of analysis, the non‐independence of observations compromises the application of conventional statistical tests. Where such data are reported, they are tabulated in the fourth column of Table  2 , along with any restrictions (e.g. percentages only calculated on events initially rated as unlikely to have occurred). The specific events imagined are not described as there were often multiple events, and these were not necessarily the same for all participants.

Imagination inflation studies of childhood events

Cells left blank where relevant data not reported.

B/S = between‐subjects; W/S = within‐subjects.

This way of presenting the results is silent about the amount of any increase and where this occurs on the belief/confidence scale, impeding quantification and interpretation of the effects (Horselenberg et al., 2000 ; Pezdek & Eddy, 2001 ). One solution has been to compare the means of the same items when they were imagined and not imagined (i.e. treating items as cases). The consequent non‐independence of observations once again compromises the application of conventional statistical tests. Reliable estimates of the presence of a significant imagination inflation effect can however be obtained from tests based on mean scores for individual participants, providing that the tests' assumptions are not violated (Garry et al., 1996 ). The next column of Table  2 therefore reports, where available, the results of such between‐group statistical tests. These include comparisons of post‐intervention group means adjusted for pre‐intervention means, comparisons of group change scores and tests of time by group interactions in repeated‐measures ANOVAs. The final two columns quantify the size of this effect in terms of the mean increase on the 8‐point scale and whether this increase takes the average score above the scale midpoint. It was not possible to quantify the effect by reporting the number of participants whose scores moved from below to above the midpoint as these data were rarely reported.

Results and discussion

The studies are relatively homogeneous in that, with some exceptions, participants imagine events initially rated as unlikely that occurred to them before the age of 10 years. Visual inspection of the percentages of all memories with increased belief ratings after events that had been either imagined or not imagined (Table  2 , column 4) indicates a very consistent advantage for the imagined condition, even though it was only a minority of participants who changed their ratings (Garry, Sharman, Wade, Hunt, & Smith, 2001 ). Consistent with these data are the changes in mean ratings for the imagined and control conditions shown in column 6 of Table  2 , where these are available. Visual inspection confirms that in the great majority of cases, positive mean change is higher after imagination versus control conditions.

Seventeen out of the 19 datasets reported valid tests of the imagination inflation effect for a belief that the event had happened based on individuals' mean scores. As shown in Table  2 , 11 of these found a statistically significant difference in the belief as a result of imagining versus not imagining and six did not. In two datasets (Sharman & Barnier, 2008 ; Sharman & Scoboria, 2009 ), there was additionally an imagination inflation effect for recollective experience measured by means of a memory scale, but the number of participants with clear complete memories was not reported in either study. A similar effect was not found in the only other study assessing memory (Bays, Zabrucky, & Gagne, 2012 ). Of the 14 datasets reporting means pre‐intervention and post‐intervention, 13 found that the increase attributable to imagination over the non‐imagination control condition was equivalent to 1 point or less on the 8‐point scale (or on a 7‐point scale in the Horselenberg et al. studies) and that mean scores remained in the lower half of the scale. In one study reporting such data, Garry et al. ( 1996 ) noted that large jumps to eight on the post‐test confidence scale occurred for six of the 112 imagined items and two of the 119 not‐imagined items.

In one exception to this general pattern of results (Sharman & Barnier, 2008 ), mean belief ratings for imagined negatively and positively valenced childhood events jumped from 1.86 to 5.50 and 2.02 to 5.54, respectively. Increases were also larger than average in the control condition, with ratings rising from 1.82 to 3.72, and from 1.97 to 4.19, for negatively and positively valenced events, respectively.

The data indicate fairly conclusively that on average the imagination inflation paradigm increases participants' beliefs that events, originally perceived as unlikely to have happened, are more likely to have occurred than they first estimated. The procedure influences a minority of participants, and to date, the effects appear to be small in magnitude. Post‐test ratings tended to fall below the scale midpoint, and it has been suggested that this effect can be more accurately characterised as reducing the belief that the event did not happen rather than increasing the belief that the event did happen (Mazzoni et al., 2001 ; Smeets et al., 2005 ). From a source memory perspective (Johnson, 1997 , 2006 ), acceptance of the suggested event is likely to be increased by the additional available imagery, but the effect may be limited by participants' awareness of the mental operations that preceded the eventual judgements.

An alternative explanation for the effect raised in the initial study by Garry et al. ( 1996 ) was that because most events are selected for having low confidence ratings initially, part of the effect may consist of regression to the mean. Consistent with this possibility, Pezdek and Eddy ( 2001 ) reported that whereas autobiographical belief increased during the course of the experiment for events initially rated as unlikely to have occurred, it decreased for events initially rated as likely to have occurred. The plausibility of this explanation can be assessed by inspecting the mean change in belief that occurred for control events also selected for being unlikely to have occurred. Regression effects should increase autobiographical belief for these events too. Table  2 indicates that in the nine datasets that reported a significant imagination inflation effect and gave the relevant group means, a change in autobiographical belief shown by the control group was positive in five cases and negative in four cases. This suggests that regression to the mean is unlikely to have made a substantial contribution to imagination inflation.

Another possibility discussed originally by Garry et al. ( 1996 ) is that imagination procedures can actually lead to the retrieval of true memories and that this explains at least some of the increase in subsequent confidence. In particular, the repeated opportunity to retrieve childhood events may result in hypermnesia (Erdelyi, 2010 ) such that true memories are spontaneously recovered (Hyman et al., 1995 ; Hyman & Pentland, 1996 ). In one of the few studies to have addressed this possibility, Mazzoni and Memon ( 2003 ) employed as events a medical procedure (having a skin sample taken from a little finger) that was known not to have been used in the country where the study was conducted and compared it with another procedure [having a milk (baby) tooth extracted] that was. This design ensured that any increase in confidence about the ‘impossible’ event occurring could not be attributed to a true memory. While confidence increased for both events, the magnitude of the increase obtained for the ‘impossible’ event was very small (less than half a scale point). Moreover, interpretation of statistical significance of their results was complicated by the combination of both events in the analysis and by the simultaneous decreased confidence in the control group who did not imagine the events.

Although the possibility that recall of true events might account for a proportion of the imagination inflation effect was not ruled out by the Mazzoni and Memon ( 2003 ) study, it seems unlikely to have been an important contributor to results using the original Life Events Inventory (LEI). This is because in that measure childhood events were quite specific, low‐frequency occurrences (e.g. ‘Broke a window with your hand’). This factor may, however, account for the exceptionally strong effects achieved by Sharman and Barnier ( 2008 ) who developed their own version of the LEI, replacing most of the original items with positive and negative events (Stefanie J. Sharman, personal communication 4 December 2014). Relative to the standard LEI, the description of the events presented as examples appears to have been less distinctive and to have included an element of judgement or interpretation (e.g. ‘you gave someone a gift for no special reason’). These features raise the possibility (i) that events were more easily overlooked when initially rated for belief in occurrence and (ii) that guided imagination was more likely to have prompted recall of a genuine past experience.

False Feedback

A second group of studies has attempted to increase belief in childhood autobiographical events by providing false feedback to participants. In a typical design, participants complete a number of measures, including the confidence with which they believe certain events happened to them before the age of 10 (for example, that they liked or did not like certain foods), before being provided with false feedback and re‐rating their confidence in the event happening to them. The studies we review provide feedback ostensibly from a computer programme or psychotherapist, indicating that a particular event or preference was likely to have happened or applied to the participant at that age. The study may involve imagining the event or answering questions about it (i.e. using imagination inflation procedures) prior to the final re‐rating of confidence. A few of these studies also recorded the extent to which following feedback participants had some indication of an actual memory of the suggested event, rather than believing it had happened without being able to remember it.

A separate question of interest is the extent to which those who respond positively to the false feedback (typically called ‘Believers’ in these studies) differ from those who do not respond (‘Non‐believers’). ‘Believers’ are typically defined as responding to the intervention with at least a 1 point increase in confidence and reporting some belief or memory for the target event, although they are not required to report high levels of autobiographical belief and/or a recollective experience (D. M. Bernstein, Laney, Morris, & Loftus, 2005a ; D. M. Bernstein et al., 2005b ). As the primary focus of this review is to document the effects of false feedback versus no false feedback on autobiographical belief and recollective experience, means reported in Table  3 refer to the entire subsample exposed to the various conditions. However, secondary analyses concerning ‘Believers’ within qualifying studies are discussed in the text.

False memory studies of uncorroborated childhood events (‘false feedback’ paradigm)

B/S = between‐subjects; FF = false feedback condition; No FF = no false feedback condition; P = Participants.

A search was conducted on Web of Science, Current Contents and MEDLINE using the joint topic search terms ‘false memor*’ and ‘childhood’. To be included, a study had to compare a false feedback condition in which individual participants were given specific information suggesting they personally were likely to have experienced the event with a no‐feedback control condition and measure autobiographical belief or recollective experience both before and after the feedback. The search produced 350 potential articles up to the end of 2015, and additional hand‐searching of cited and citing references produced a further five. Of these 15 articles, incorporating 20 different datasets met the aforementioned criteria. Data were extracted independently and cross‐checked by both authors.

The data are summarised in Table  3 , which in column 3 records the specific childhood event being suggested and additional relevant experimental conditions. Column 4 indicates whether there was a significant false feedback effect in comparison with the control condition. Tests purely on within‐group changes in belief before and after the manipulation are not reported, as these may be attributable to regression to the mean or other artefacts of repeated testing. The next two columns quantify the effects obtained by reporting the mean increase on the 8‐point scale typically used and whether the mean increase after false feedback exceeded the scale midpoint. The final column reports the percentage of participants who described themselves as remembering or, in the absence of an actual memory, believing that the suggested event had occurred.

Once again, the studies are relatively homogeneous in that most participants imagine events that occurred to them before the age of 10 years. Visual inspection in Table  3 of the mean increased belief ratings before and after false feedback indicates a very consistent advantage for this condition over the control condition. However, like in the imagination inflation studies, analyses of ‘Believers’ indicate that it was usually the minority of study participants who showed clear evidence of responding positively to the intervention (range 18%, in Bernstein et al., 2005a , Study 1, to 53%, in Laney, Morris, Bernstein, Wakefield, & Loftus, 2008 , Study 2).

The mean advantage for the false feedback over the no false feedback condition is confirmed by the reported statistics, shown in Table  3 , column 4. In the 15 datasets with between‐group tests on mean confidence ratings, 13 found that these differences were significant, one obtained mixed results, and one found no significant differences. As shown in Table  3 , column 5, of the 19 datasets where the means or mean change in belief are reported, four involve a maximum increase of less than 1 scale point with false feedback, seven involve a maximum increase of 1–2 scale points and eight a maximum of more than 2 scale points. Only one study reported a belief increase beyond the scale midpoint. Six of the eight datasets reporting these larger increases used guided imagery in addition to false feedback, whereas only one of the 11 datasets reporting smaller increases did so (Clifasefi, Bernstein, Mantonakis, & Loftus, 2013 ). There is also some indication that the target of the false feedback may play a role in determining the size of the effect. For example, participants' belief ratings actually decreased after false feedback that they had been sick after eating chocolate chip cookies, whereas three of the largest confidence increases came after false feedback concerning attitudes to asparagus.

Studying the subset of participants (‘Believers’) who appear to succumb to the false feedback provides an estimate of the maximum effect that can be achieved. Typically ‘Believers’ reported an increase on the autobiographical belief scale that ranged from 1 to 2 points, remaining below the scale midpoint, for an event at a theme park (Berkowitz, Laney, Morris, Garry, & Loftus, 2008 ) to 3–5 points, increasing beyond the scale midpoint, for food‐related events (D. M. Bernstein et al., 2005a , 2005b ; Laney et al., 2008 ; Laney et al., 2008 ; Scoboria, Mazzoni, Jarry, & Bernstein, 2012 ). In some cases, belief ratings recorded by ‘Believers’ after false feedback were as high as 6.48 on the 8‐point scale (Laney et al., 2008 ).

A number of false feedback studies also attempted to assess the extent to which participants ‘remembered’ the suggested events rather than just increased their belief they were likely to have happened. Some included ‘memory’ scales as well as ‘belief’ scales at pre‐test and post‐test (Table  1 ): Of these, two datasets indicated a significant increase with false feedback (Scoboria et al., 2012 ; Sharman & Calacouris, 2010 ) and two did not (Scoboria, Lynn, Hessen, & Fisico, 2007 , Studies 1 and 2).

Alternatively, investigators have assessed recollective experience at post‐test only. In an early study (Mazzoni, Loftus, Seitz, & Lynn, 1999 ), ‘some evidence of having a memory’ was found in 44% of the false feedback group, but the majority of the memories presented were clearly speculations or outside the required age range. A number of subsequent studies had their participants choose between indicating that they had a memory of a target event, that they believed the event had occurred but had no memory of it or that they did not believe the event had occurred. These data, shown in Table  3 , reveal a wide range of different outcomes: Across five datasets, the proportion of participants ‘remembering’ ranged from 2% to 30%. All the datasets with higher rates of ‘remembering’ involved experiences with foods (Laney et al., 2008 , Studies 1 and 2; Laney et al., 2008 ; Scoboria et al., 2012 , 2012 ).

Of the studies identifying a subset of ‘Believers’, the proportion endorsing a ‘memory’ as opposed to a ‘belief’ fell between 0% and 20% in studies suggesting the participant had been ill after eating something (D. M. Bernstein et al., 2005a , 2005b ) or had had a specific experience at a theme park (Berkowitz et al., 2008 ). This proportion reached 40% in a study suggesting being sick after drinking alcohol (Clifasefi et al., 2013 ) and 20–50% in studies involving like or dislike of asparagus (Laney et al., 2008 ; Laney et al., 2008 ). A study that provided personalised false feedback suggesting that the participant had been sick on peach yoghourt reported that 20% of this group ‘remembered’ the event with their mean scores on a recollective experience scale reaching 6.82 out of 8 (Scoboria et al., 2012 ).

False feedback studies have shown consistently that participants' autobiographical beliefs can be manipulated under certain experimental conditions, obtaining somewhat stronger average effects than the imagination inflation studies. This appears to be a robust effect found across a wide variety of suggested events. The pattern is similar to the imagination inflation studies in that the majority of participants do not increase their confidence ratings.

Again consistent with the source memory framework (Johnson, 2006 ), larger increases in confidence are found for events that are more likely to correspond to real‐life experiences. For example, a minority of individuals do respond strongly to false feedback concerning experiences of eating certain foods, particularly if they are novel. It has been suggested that false feedback concerning having been sick as a child may be much more likely to be accepted if the food is associated with unpleasant odours (such as egg salad) or is sour (like yoghourt) (Pezdek & Freyd, 2009 ). They propose that such effects are likely to be restricted to less appealing foods that are less often consumed. While it is true that the increases in confidence about having been sick on chocolate chip cookies or strawberry ice cream were much lower than after egg salad, suggestions about both liking and hating asparagus led to substantial changes in confidence. The implication is that individuals have complex and differentiated attitudes towards different food types that permit a variety of opportunities for suggestion to alter memory.

As in the imagination inflation studies, increased levels of confidence rarely exceeded the scale midpoint, so that the results might be regarded as describing a reduction in disbelief rather than a positive belief in the event's occurrence. The one exception was the study by Sharman and Scoboria ( 2009 ). Rather than the distinctive events used in the original LEI, their version consisted of less specific but highly plausible achievement and affiliation events such as ‘You encouraged a friend or sibling’ and ‘You worked very carefully on an important project’ (Stefanie J. Sharman, personal communication 8 February 2015). A large increase in belief even in the absence of false feedback suggests that, as in Sharman and Barnier's ( 2008 ) imagination inflation study, the nature of these events may have been more effective in triggering actual memories.

However, the false feedback research has also involved memory for events prior to age 3 years (Mazzoni & Loftus, 1998 ; Mazzoni et al., 1999 ), memory for interactions at Disneyland (Berkowitz et al., 2008 ) and memory for bone screening (Scoboria et al., 2007 ). Thus, although for many of the studies, it is difficult to rule out some contribution from actual experience, the range of events studied makes this implausible as an explanation for all the effects obtained.

In comparison with the imagination inflation studies, there has been greater interest in assessing recollective experience as opposed to belief. Rates have been highly inconsistent across studies, and even among ‘Believers’, the range reporting any recollective experience has varied from 0% to 50%. Investigators have relied primarily on self‐report, for example, requiring participants to decide whether their experience could best be described as a memory or a belief. This way of structuring the question does not address issues of memory confidence. The examples provided by Mazzoni et al. ( 1999 ) illustrate the wide range of likely ‘memories’ participants in this paradigm may produce. Participants have sometimes been required to write down what they remembered, and it would be valuable to conduct analyses of these more detailed reports, or classify them according to their appropriateness, clarity or completeness. Whereas effects on autobiographical belief are well established, it is probably premature to generalise about the effects of false feedback on ‘full’ memories and important to note that such recollective experiences as are produced may correspond in part to actual experiences rather than to ones that never happened.

Memory Implantation

The final group of studies, involving the paradigm with the strongest explicit suggestion, has attempted to ‘implant’ a memory of a childhood autobiographical event from scratch, by providing explicit ‘corroboration’ from an authoritative source that the event happened. In a typical design, a parent of the experimental participant is contacted to confirm or disconfirm whether their child experienced a number of specified childhood events. The experimenter usually targets a particular event as the false event (e.g. being lost in a shopping mall or a ride in a hot air balloon), and if the parent indicates it did not happen, the participant is included in the study. Subsequently, participants are encouraged to recall over two or three sessions the details of the false event they are misleadingly told the parent has confirmed as happening. In some cases, they may be shown a doctored photograph that supposedly illustrates their presence at the false event. Unlike the imagination inflation and false feedback paradigms, no systematic baseline measures of belief are taken, and the focus is predominantly on the nature of any recollection. After and during the recall attempts, participants are instructed to provide accounts of the false event and sometimes of comparison true events that have actually been confirmed by the parent. In some studies, as in the other paradigms, they are also guided to imagine the false events as if they had happened. These accounts are then rated for their correspondence to a complete memory, by the investigators as well as sometimes by the participants themselves.

To be included, a study had to contain a procedure (i) designed to produce a memory of a childhood autobiographical event that on another's authority had not occurred and (ii) that employed ‘corroboration’ specific to the individual participant (such as confirmation by their own family members that the event had happened). From the previously conducted search on Web of Science, Current Contents and MEDLINE, using the joint topic search terms ‘false memor*’ and ‘childhood’, reported in False Feedback Section, 19 articles met the inclusion criteria. Additional hand‐searching of cited and citing references produced a further two articles. After omitting one study in which the target event employed by the researchers contained both true and false segments (Žeželj, Pajić, Omanović, Ninković, & Grčić, 2009 ), a total of 20 articles incorporating 22 different datasets resulted. Data were extracted independently and cross‐checked by both authors.

The data are summarised in Table  4 , which in column 3 details the nature of false events suggested and any relevant between‐subjects conditions. Column 4 indicates if the procedures involved instructions to imagine the false event or not, and the data are presented in columns 5–8. As previously discussed in A Framework for Discriminating Truth and Falsity in One's Own Autobiographical Memories Section, and detailed in Table  1 , there have been several investigator‐based rating systems for categorising participants' recollective experiences. Which of the data columns in Table  4 is populated depends on the particular system used. Column 5 reports the percentage of participants describing any recollective experience associated with the false events, including images, memories that were vague, uncertain or partial and speculations. Column 6 reports the percentage of participants describing stronger false recollective experiences that still did not reach our criteria for a ‘full’ memory of requiring evidence for confidence in the recollective experience. These include any recollective experiences left after images not corresponding to memories were explicitly excluded, or experiences where autobiographical belief was measured and incorporated into the false memory rating but confidence in memory was not. Column 7 reports the percentage of participants describing clear memories of false recollective experiences after both images not corresponding to memories and other forms of partial memory were explicitly excluded by the rating system and where there was evidence of confidence in the memory. The final data column gives the means of any self‐report measures of memory for the false event. Included are a measure of autobiographical belief (‘belief in event’), measures that attempt to distinguish whether the participant has a belief or a memory (‘know‐remember’, ‘memory/belief form’), a measure assessing recollective experience (‘memory extent’) and a measure assessing confidence in the recollective experience (‘memory confidence’).

Studies implanting ‘Corroborated’ false childhood memories of entirely new events in adults

Once again, there is a fairly homogeneous set of studies with participants mainly recalling events supposed to have happened before the age of 10 years, but in one case recalling events from ages 11–14 years (Shaw & Porter, 2015 ). The percentage of participants reporting any recollective experience (Table  4 , column 5) associated with the suggested false event, no matter how vague, uncertain or speculative, ranged from 12% (Hyman & Pentland, 1996 , spilt punchbowl at wedding, ‘think’ condition) to 93% (Shaw & Porter, 2015 , committed a criminal act). Rates for studies including plausible and implausible events (Pezdek et al., 1997 ) were averaged across both sorts of event. The weighted average was 47.00% (median 34%). Rates within individual studies varied considerably according to the specific intervention employed and conditions tested. Thus, excluding the two studies that did not employ imagery across all conditions (Hyman & Pentland, 1996 ; Qin, Ogle, & Goodman, 2008 ), the weighted mean percentage was 46.3% for the 12 studies using guided imagery but 26.8% for the eight studies not using imagery (Mann–Whitney test z  = 3.17, p  < .01). Providing an actual school photo increased the percentage of participants ‘recalling’ putting a manufactured compound called Slime in a teacher's desk from 46% to 78% (Lindsay et al., 2004 ). Using a narrative description along with a doctored photo of a hot air balloon ride, and presenting the narrative first, boosted recollective experiences considerably (Wade, Garry, Nash, & Harper, 2010 ).

Applying a more stringent definition of recollective experience, by excluding images not experienced as memories (Column 6), the percentage of participants who ‘recalled’ ranged from 0% for events selected for being implausible (Pezdek et al., 1997 , Study 2, receiving an enema) to 65% (Lindsay et al., 2004 , put Slime in teacher's desk). The weighted average was 25.45% (median 16%). The lowest rate of ‘recall’ of an event not selected for being implausible, going on a hot air balloon ride in New Zealand, was 5% (French, Sutherland, & Garry, 2006 ). In contrast, other studies with the same investigator and implanting a ‘memory’ of the same event in the same country achieved rates as high as 41% (Garry & Wade, 2005 ). Once again, there was considerable variation within studies, and part of this appeared to be due to the provision of personal, self‐relevant information. Thus, inclusion of details like the name of a participant's teacher or photos of familiar individuals significantly boosted the rate of recollective experience (Desjardins & Scoboria, 2007 ; Hessen‐Kayfitz & Scoboria, 2012 ; Lindsay et al., 2004 ).

Using the most stringent definition of recollection in which there is some evidence for both recollective experience and confidence in memory (Column 7), the percentage of participants who ‘recalled’ ranged from 3% (Ost, Foster, Costall, & Bull, 2005 ) to 26% (Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999 ), both studies using a variety of events. The upper rate was considerably reduced relative to the previous column, leading to a lower weighted average (15.35%) but a similar median (12–15%).

The final column of Table  4 documents the self‐report data collected by 11 of the 22 studies. Measures of autobiographical belief indicate that mean confidence that false events had actually happened fell mainly in the lower half of the belief scale. Omitted from Table  4 are data on belief in true events that, when reported, was consistently higher (Desjardins & Scoboria, 2007 ; Lindsay et al., 2004 ; Wade et al., 2002 ). However, belief in a false event was much higher in one study when a more stringent definition of a false memory was used (Wade et al., 2002 ). Measures attempting to distinguish between belief versus recollective experience reported scores heavily weighted towards belief. In one study, where investigator‐based and self‐ratings of whether or not participants had a memory of a false event could be directly compared (Otgaar et al., 2013 ), the investigator rating (36%) was almost double the self‐rating (20%).

Finally, average scores on measures of recollective experience and confidence in memory for false events all fell at or below the midpoint of the scales used. Even when clear memories were identified by the investigators, participants' confidence in them was below the scale midpoint (Hyman & Billings, 1998 ). Omitted from Table  4 are data on recollection of true events that, when reported, was consistently higher (Garry & Wade, 2005 ; Heaps & Nash, 2001 ; Hessen‐Kayfitz & Scoboria, 2012 ; Lindsay et al., 2004 ; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995 ; Ost et al., 2005 ; Pezdek et al., 1997 ; Porter et al., 1999 ; Shaw & Porter, 2015 ; Strange et al., 2008 ). There were no indications that studies using guided imagery obtained higher self‐report ratings of recollective experience or confidence in memory than studies that did not use guided imagery and in one study where these conditions were directly compared use of imagery led to numerically lower confidence in memory (Hyman & Pentland, 1996 ).

The unique contribution of the memory implantation studies has been to demonstrate that substantial numbers of college students can be encouraged to have false recollective experiences when they are misled by authoritative sources into believing that certain events happened to them in childhood. It is clear, however, that the results of these studies are highly variable and that a high proportion of these ‘memories’ are speculative, partial or only in the form of images. Many participants harbour doubts about their authenticity, and they are not on average rated as being comparable with memories of true events. Attempts to adopt more stringent definitions of what constitutes a memory reduce the mean percentage of participants who respond to the suggestions from 47% to 15%.

There are a number of reasons to question whether all these 15% would meet the requirements for a ‘full’ memory set out by Brewer ( 1986 ). In terms of autobiographical belief, the largest effect obtained was a 67% belief that an event for which the participant reported a ‘clear memory’ had actually occurred (Wade et al., 2002 ). Other studies found that self‐ratings of having a ‘memory’ were much lower even than the more stringent investigator ratings (Otgaar et al., 2013 ), and even using stringent criteria recollections identified by investigators were only given average confidence ratings by participants for their veracity (Hyman & Billings, 1998 ). Similarly, Shaw and Porter ( 2015 ) found a marked discrepancy between the ease of inducing experiences rated by investigators as memories and the confidence participants had that they were real.

From their own data, Hyman and colleagues (Hyman et al., 1995 ; Hyman & Pentland, 1996 ) have argued that through repeated interviews and the social demands of the experiment, misleading information is likely to be integrated into true event memories. This begs the question of whether additional details, frequently included in the criteria for false memory judgements, reflect true memories of actual experiences similar to, but not quite the same, as those being suggested. Hyman and Billings ( 1998 ) in a study using visualisation provide such a memory as the one example of a clear false memory of knocking over a punchbowl at a family friend's wedding (edited here):

Interview 2: …Like the table was a round table with a couple of chairs sitting around it and were under the shade of a tree. They were right there and there were some drinks on the table, yeah, I think there was just drinks on the table, I don't think there was an actual pitcher or anything. I think when I just bumped the table, or maybe I bumped the glasses or something, it kind of just spilled on them, so I think what I did was I bumped the table, I liked bumped the table and the glasses tipped over on them (p. 10).

One hint that the distinction between memory and imagination might not always be easy or possible for judges to make from the false event description comes from our finding that, while guided imagery instructions led to significantly higher rates of investigator‐based false memory judgements, self‐reports of belief in and memory of false suggested events are similarly low for studies with and without guided imagery instructions. This is consistent with the source memory framework (Johnson, 2006 ), which predicts that the act of imagination may create additional contents that could be confused with real memories, but may also lead the person to discount those contents as being due to the mental operations employed. This suggests that when guided imagery is used, unless participants are explicitly asked about the extent to which their accounts reflect the productions of their imagination based on the experimenter's instructions (as opposed to actual memories), judgements of false memories are at risk of being inflated.

A related issue to the possible miscategorisation of true memories, because of their similarity to false events, is whether some memories deemed false by investigators on the authority of an older family member may have actually happened (Desjardins & Scoboria, 2007 ; Porter et al., 1999 ). Extensive reviews of documented childhood experiences have found that people are more likely to have forgotten past negative events they have experienced than to have remembered events they have not (Brewin, Andrews, & Gotlib, 1993 ; Hardt & Rutter, 2004 ). These reviews point to evidence that younger and older people's reports of their childhoods are more in accord with those of independent observers than with their parents' reports. The agreement between parents and their children on reports of stressful life events is also weak (Sandberg et al., 1993 ). One reason for this is that childhood experiences outside of the home may not be known about or shared with parents. All this suggests that events cannot always be assumed to be false on the authority of a parent or older relative, because of them forgetting and sometimes not being in a position to know.

The issue is very relevant to data from studies such as that of Shaw and Porter ( 2015 ) that purport to show very high percentages of participants generating false memories of ‘criminal acts’. It is not clear how many of these acts would have been deemed criminal by independent observers because the examples cited in the paper refer to everyday events that are common in the lives of teenagers, such as minor scuffles and fights. But, underscoring the likelihood that these might at least in part be based on real memories, a large representative survey in the UK found that almost half of young people aged 11 to 17 years reported committing at least one criminal act (Beniart, Anderson, Lee, & Utting, 2002 ).

General Discussion

With the controversy over child sexual abuse allegations in mind, the main interest of the false memory studies has been the extent to which individuals can come to accept the reality of childhood events that never happened. In the absence of a consistent approach to these questions, and attempting to account both for the variability in the empirical data and the acknowledged complexity of the judgements involved, we applied a framework derived from Brewer ( 1986 ) that discriminates different types of autobiographical memory experience. In this final section, we summarise the conclusions suggested by the research findings.

The imagination inflation studies were by and large only intended to assess autobiographical belief, so that the extent to which these procedures produce full autobiographical memories is unknown. However, reports of very large increases in belief following imagination inflation might indicate the creation of a full false memory. In the one study reporting this information, this effect occurred for approximately 5% of imagined items (Garry et al., 1996 ). Such information concerning individual variability is highly desirable, as mean differences do not identify how many participants respond strongly to the experimental procedures. We would strongly encourage the routine reporting of these data in the future.

The false feedback studies have gone to greater lengths to assess recollective experience but achieved inconsistent results, even when the same false event was suggested. Measures have largely relied on a self‐report and on participants' understanding of the difference between belief and memory, but with little systematic follow‐up to confirm the validity of their responses. Given the known difficulty participants have in interpreting questions about memory (Ost et al., 2008 ; Sjöden, Granhag, Ost, & Roos af Hjelmsäter, 2009 ; Smeets et al., 2006 ; Smeets et al., 2009 ), it would probably be premature to estimate the number of full autobiographical memories and to distinguish these from actual experiences, for example, of eating asparagus or yoghourt. It is interesting that despite these uncertainties, a number of the studies succeeded in bringing about small behavioural changes in their participants, for example, changing the amount of available food consumed in the laboratory (Scoboria, Mazzoni, & Jarry, 2008 ; Scoboria et al., 2012 ).

Where larger effects were obtained, for example, among ‘Believers’ who responded more strongly to the false feedback manipulations, they were mainly limited to the suggestion of common experiences, for example, involving certain sorts of food, or less distinctive experiences that as well as being common were more open to interpretation (Sharman & Calacouris, 2010 ). These results are consistent with the source memory framework that predicts that importing features of real experiences decreases the accessibility of disconfirming information and makes it more likely that suggested false events are accepted. The greater impact of the deceptive information provided in the false feedback studies, over imagination alone, is consistent with research on persuasive communications that the degree of change in attitudes and opinions is greater, the more credible or trustworthy the source of information (Pornpitakpan, 2004 ).

The memory implantation studies have gone to greater lengths to deceive participants and have largely relied on sources of evidence, such as parents, that fulfil all the criteria for establishing trust in communication: expertness relevant to the topic under discussion, reliability as an information source and the possession of favourable intentions towards the recipient (Giffin, 1967 ). Although these methods, particularly when combined with the use of guided imagery, have produced substantial quantities of recollective experiences, their ability to produce full autobiographical memories is more equivocal. From our review of studies using more stringent definitions of recollection, the upper bound would seem to be about 15% of participants, but for reasons reviewed previously, particularly the discrepancies between observer‐ratings and self‐ratings of memory experiences, the actual figure may be lower.

These data are inconsistent with claims (e.g. Conway, 2013 ) that it is easy to create false memories of childhood in others. Our review indicates that the majority of participants are resistant to the suggestions they are given, despite repeated attempts to remember, the use of guided imagery, doctored photos, the involvement of trusted others and what Hyman and Pentland ( 1996 ) noted were the very high levels of demand exercised on college students. Also, it has become apparent from the false memory examples published that those who do have recollective experiences are often cautious and uncertain about them. The data strongly support the source memory perspective that emphasises the complex judgements involved in evaluating truth and falsity in autobiographical memory. Findings that participants also discriminate appropriately in their ratings of clarity, confidence, and so on between true and false memories, and produce more details for true than false events (Qin et al., 2008 ), also testify to the appropriate operation of source memory judgements.

Even if the numbers of full false memories created by these procedures are few, it is still necessary to explain how some people plainly are convinced that these events have occurred. In this respect, it is worth quoting at some length the observations of Ira Hyman, a pioneer in the field (Hyman & Pentland, 1996 ):

In all of our studies, the suggestions regarding an event do not appear to be adopted wholesale. Rather what appears to occur is that the individual considers the suggestions in light of other self‐knowledge (self‐schema, personal memories, etc.), and constructs a memory that is a combination of the suggestion plus related self‐knowledge. Hyman et al. ( 1995 ) and Hyman and Billings ( 1995 ) both reported that individuals who talked about related self‐knowledge in the early interviews were more likely to create a false memory by the end of the experiment (p. 112).

Consistent with this, several studies have demonstrated that the inclusion within the experimental procedure of personal, self‐relevant details like photographs of familiar individuals boosts recollective experience (Desjardins & Scoboria, 2007 ; Hessen‐Kayfitz & Scoboria, 2012 ; Lindsay et al., 2004 ). It is plausible that these details act as cues, aiding the retrieval of genuine self‐knowledge and therefore the subsequent construction of false memories in the way described by Hyman.

The possibility raised by these researchers that even full false memories are at least partially constructed from veridical autobiographical elements, and the independence of measures of recollective experience from autobiographical belief (Scoboria et al., 2014 ), has important implications for future research. They suggest that there should be a more formal way of establishing the existence of a personal memory that takes into account the existence of a recollective experience together with confidence in that memory. One way of achieving this as suggested by Ost, Scoboria, Smeets and others (Ost et al., 2008 ; Sjöden et al., 2009 ; Smeets et al., 2006 ; Smeets et al., 2009 ) is that memory reports are followed up with individual questioning designed to have participants detail their confidence in different elements of their ‘memory’ and to make corresponding source judgements. It would also be valuable to test whether the increased false memory rate produced by personally relevant details is due to the retrieval of additional veridical elements that then find their way into recall of the suggested events or to the retrieval of a true event similar to the one that is being suggested.

Given the discrepancies between investigator and self‐report judgements of false memories, future research could also address how experimenters assess the content of false memory descriptions when guided imagery is included in instructions to remember. In studies using this intervention, participants, with no prior memory of the false event, are asked to imagine details as if the event had actually happened, such as what it might have been like, what was seen, who was present, and what the weather was like. The question therefore arises whether experimenters incorporate accounts of such imaginings into the content of the event description used to determine the existence of false memories. Although the majority of studies distinguish images without memories from actual memories in their rates of false memories, most studies do not make clear exactly how this is performed.

Conclusions and implications for memories of child sexual abuse

Authors in the majority of the studies reviewed previously have claimed that their research questions and data are relevant to the controversy concerning false memories of childhood trauma, particularly child sexual abuse, being created by therapists. It is therefore important to consider how their procedures might be mirrored in the real world, how the different approaches to measurement should be described and what might be appropriately concluded from this body of work for presentation in a court of law.

One issue is the extent to which the experiments create conditions that are similar to those that might occur in a course of therapy. Thus, some therapists might plausibly have patients try to recall by vividly imagining hypothetical events, guiding them with specific questions and do this repeatedly, as in the imagination inflation studies. They might provide plausibility information, for example, concerning the high proportion of their patients who had been sexually abused, or state that their patients' symptoms made it likely that they had been abused, as in the false feedback studies. They would not be likely to provide more elaborate forms of corroboration, such as the doctored photos or parental statements that feature in the memory implantation studies.

Second, the plausibility of events suggested by therapists depends crucially on the individuals' knowledge of the setting in which it may have occurred and the other persons who may be involved. Despite the fact that the false memory studies have not yet demonstrated, it is possible to implant memories for events involving intimate transactions with family and close others, an upbringing involving exposure to chaotic, neglectful or sexually inappropriate others may provide a background in which such suggestions are more likely to be regarded as plausible and accepted. More problematic are memories for abuse that, as is often the case, is repeated, sometimes with very great frequency. A challenge for the future will be to demonstrate that it is possible to implant memories of a repeated event. For the present, this should be noted as an important limitation in court reports.

Thirdly, it should be noted that as sources of information therapists enjoy several advantages. If a successful therapeutic relationship has been established, they are likely to be trusted. High levels of trust would coincide with perceived expertise, making their persuasive communications more likely to be accepted (Giffin, 1967 ). They are also in a position to draw attention to, or encourage patients to retrieve, very specific personally relevant details that might increase the amount of recollective experience around suggested events. Unlike parents, however, they are not in a position to make statements from personal experience about what did or did not happen during their patients' childhoods, thus reducing their informational value as sources for suggested memories.

In referring to this literature in courtroom testimony, it will be important to be explicit about the type of effects being described (e.g. do they involve ‘full’ or ‘clear’ memories), and the size of any effects obtained (e.g. do they indicate a belief that an event was more likely to have happened than not). It should be noted that in these experiments, repeated attempts to remember have been shown to lead to the recovery of true autobiographical memories, as well as to false memories containing true elements (Hyman et al., 1995 ; Hyman & Pentland, 1996 ). Similarly, clinicians have argued that in their practice, false memories tend not to arise de novo but are often based in part on memories of real events (Mollon, 1998 ). Other limitations need to be mentioned. For example, practical and ethical constraints mean it is difficult to assess the durability of false memories over the periods of time typical of legal cases. Nor is there yet evidence to show that false memories can be created with the degree of conviction necessary to sustain protracted legal proceedings involving the police and cross‐examination in the courts. On the other hand, therapists may have been able to wield considerably more suggestive influence than was possible in these brief laboratory studies.

As regards the terminology used in court reports, it is clear that use of the term ‘false memory’ without qualification or explanation has the potential to be misleading. At minimum, we recommend that experts wanting to refer to this literature need to educate courts about the conditions needed to establish the presence of an autobiographical memory, and to draw attention to the difference between autobiographical belief, recollection, and confidence in memory when discussing the results of these studies. It will also be important to describe the age of the participants and the nature of the events that have been suggested or falsely recalled in these studies and not to generalise from studies of food preference, say, to more distinctive events.

In summary, there seem to us to be a number of conclusions that can and cannot be properly drawn from the existing experimental literature. On the one hand, it has provided a valuable demonstration that compelling false memories can sometimes be created even with the restrictions imposed by laboratory research. There are sufficient grounds to conclude that a (probably small) minority of people might develop false memories of childhood events with these characteristics and that any such memories might contain a mixture of true and false elements. The fact that susceptibility to false memories appears to be lower than has often previously been suggested does not diminish in any way the significant implications for the courtroom and the need to consider the extremely damaging consequences that might ensue from sincerely believed but false accusations. On the other hand, we believe it cannot be concluded that false memories of childhood events possessing these characteristics are common, that they are easy to suggest or implant or that the majority of individuals are susceptible to them.

The literature we have reviewed provides valuable guidelines as to the conditions under which such false memories are more likely. The situations of most concern are those in which the following occur repeatedly and simultaneously: (i) autobiographical belief is strengthened by plausibility information supplied by a trusted figure; (ii) recollective experience is increased by encouraging and guiding imagery, particularly when it is prompted by personally relevant details; and (iii) confidence in the veracity of the resulting experiences is boosted by an uncritical acceptance of them. An example would be that of therapists who attribute their patients' symptoms to child sexual abuse in the absence of any explicit memory of it, instruct their patients in how to imagine this scenario and accept uncritically any material produced by this procedure. It should be emphasised, however, that false memories do not necessarily require any external influence and may sometimes arise from the spontaneous misinterpretation of internal dreams or images (Brewin, Huntley, & Whalley, 2012 ; Rassin, Merckelbach, & Spaan, 2001 ).

Nevertheless, it is of great concern that, unlike the great majority of qualified clinical psychologists, some alternative therapists continue to endorse mistaken ideas, for example, that people's conscious memories can go back to birth and that hypnotically retrieved memories are reliable (Andrews et al., 1999 ; Brewin & Andrews, 2014 ). These beliefs may foster the inappropriate practices we and others have identified. Given the generally accepted view by professional bodies and independent commentators that recovered memories may be genuine, false or a mixture of the two (Lindsay & Read, 1995 ; Wright, Ost, & French, 2006 ), expert witnesses are in a good position to evaluate the extent to which the conditions conducive to false memories have or have not been present prior to memory recovery. The research on creating false childhood memories has been extremely helpful in illuminating these processes and constitutes an important part of the knowledge base that experts testifying in historic abuse cases must consider.

Brewin, C. R. , and Andrews, B. (2017) Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review . Appl. Cognit. Psychol. , 31 : 2–23. doi: 10.1002/acp.3220 . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

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Childhood memory should be considered carefully, according to a new study.

Brain Science: Early Childhood Testimony Unreliable

A neuroscience review casts doubt on early memories. We talk to the researcher.

A commonly held belief that traumatic childhood memories are accurate   misleads judges and jurors in criminal cases, according to a scientific review released on Wednesday.

Neuroscience and behavioral research into memory cuts directly against confidence in eyewitness testimony expressed by police and jurors in surveys, writes psychologist Mark L. Howe of City University London.

"Memory often serves as the key or only evidence in the courtroom," Howe writes in Nature Reviews Neuroscience . Yet many police officers, judges, and jurors in North America and Europe "are naive when it comes to understanding how memories are formed, how they become distorted over time, and how stress and emotion affect remembering."

For Hungry Minds

Until the age of eight or nine, most people don't have a sense of memory that is developed enough to reliably recall more than the bare outline of events, particularly stressful ones, the review concludes. (Also see "Memory: Remember This." )

Perhaps the most notorious criminal case involving issues of dubious childhood eyewitness testimony was the McMartin Preschool trial of the 1980s. The case   involved sexual abuse accusations at a Manhattan Beach, California, day-care facility.

All charges were dropped at the end of the trial in 1990. A psychologist suggested that memories of abuse had been implanted in the minds of children by investigators, a view that swayed most of the jurors.

Nevertheless, despite what research has shown about the malleability of memory, law enforcement officials are still alarmingly overconfident about testimony from childhood, Howe suggests.

Childhood Amnesia

Memory develops slowly through infancy, behavioral research shows, with most memories before 18 months completely lost to people later in life, a phenomenon known as "infantile amnesia." Memories remain sparse and lacking in detail until age eight. (Also see "Braingames: Use It Or Lose It" .)

That means that honest courtroom testimony by adults about early childhood events would contain few details. A richly detailed recounting of events is more likely have been embroidered or created by the witness, perhaps unconsciously.

Shortly after events, "although young children are frequently correct in the basic facts of what happened, their narratives do not contain many of the additional details," Howe says. Witness testimony that includes specifics—the color of someone’s clothes or the weather on a particular day—is probably suspect. Even true memories become distorted over time.

The belief that memories of stressful events are retained more vividly than others also goes against what psychologists have found, says Howe. "Overall, the fact that an event was stressful or traumatic is not a good predictor of a child's subsequent memory for that event."

Still, more than half of judges, jurors, and police officers in a 2006 survey agreed that "traumatic experiences can be repressed for many years and then recovered." Less than a quarter of memory experts agreed.

Malleable Memories

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Overall, Howe writes that our everyday picture of memories as fixed and stable is wrong. Such beliefs about memory are fundamental, however, to the whole idea of eyewitness testimony in courtrooms. Partly for that reason, psychologists and neuroscientists have become increasingly critical of eyewitness testimony in the last decade.

National Geographic asked Howe to elaborate on some of the points he made in the review, which is part of a series on neuroscience and the law presented by the science journal. His written responses, lightly edited for clarity, follow:

How big a problem is it that adult witnesses are recounting childhood memories as testimony in the courtroom? Are many cases decided by eyewitness testimony of this type dubious?

All cases involving historic childhood sexual abuse involve memory evidence, and where there is no other corroborating evidence (e.g., medical records) it serves as the only evidence. So all cases of historic childhood sexual abuse are decided, in whole or in part, on memory evidence.

The issue, as discussed in the article, is the age at which memories were formed for the alleged abuse, the type of information contained in the complainant's narrative, the length of time this information has been in memory, and the intervening experiences that may have influenced memory during this interval.

What are the brain processes that make this kind of eyewitness testimony most unreliable? Is it the storage of memories? Or is it their retrieval? Or some combination?

It is a combination and has to do with the age at which information was encoded, how well that information can be stored, and what happens to that information during the decades of retention prior to testifying.

Do you see the remedy in educating law enforcement about the limits of this testimony? Or should there be policies limiting its use?

I view this as more of an education issue. When memory is the main or only evidence, those involved in the justice system (e.g., police and triers of fact) need to know how memory works because their naive beliefs about how it works are frequently wrong.

What do you see as the telltale signs of dubious testimony?

Because there is no litmus test discriminating true and false memories, and because decades-old memories encoded when we were children are often fragmented and decontextualized, whenever there is a worry about the extent of detail (particularly for peripheral information) and the content (particularly if there are concepts there that would not be known by a child of that age) of a complainant's narrative, then there are serious concerns about whether such memories can be used to convict.

You make the point that reconsolidation and reconstruction of memories takes place unconsciously, distorting memory. What does this say about all of our fondest memories? Are they at all reliable if we’re constantly burnishing them?

Difficult to say for certain, but my guess is that we should treat many of these memories with a (rather large) grain of salt.

There is considerable evidence showing that memory does not always serve us well if what we are trying to do is recapture an accurate or verbatim glimpse of the past. Indeed, we can often misremember even the core of events that have happened to us.

Memory serves us best by abstracting the relevant meaning from our experiences, not the exact details of every experience, and this allows us to form a worldview, a lens through which we interpret our present and anticipate the future.

Follow Dan Vergano on Twitter .

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Life Experiences — Childhood Memories

Childhood Memories Essay Examples

1. childhood memories essay prompt samples.

Before we embark on this journey down memory lane, let's first understand what a childhood memories essay entails. An essay prompt typically serves as your guiding star in crafting your piece. Here are a few samples to give you an idea of what to expect:

... Read More 1. Childhood Memories Essay Prompt Samples Before we embark on this journey down memory lane, let's first understand what a childhood memories essay entails. An essay prompt typically serves as your guiding star in crafting your piece. Here are a few samples to give you an idea of what to expect: "Write an essay about a significant childhood memory that shaped your character." "Describe a vivid childhood experience that left a lasting impact on your life." "Reflect on a cherished memory from your early years and discuss its significance."

These prompts serve as the foundation for your essay. They help you identify the core theme and purpose of your narrative.

2. Brainstorming the Perfect Childhood Memories Essay Topic

Now that you have a grasp of the prompts, it's time to brainstorm and select the most fitting topic for your childhood memories essay. Consider the following points:

• Emotional Impact: Think about memories that evoke strong emotions. These are often the most compelling stories.
• Life Lessons: Reflect on memories that taught you valuable life lessons or shaped your perspective.
• Vividness: Choose memories with vivid details and sensory experiences; they make your essay come alive.
• Uniqueness: Opt for memories that stand out or have a unique twist, avoiding overly common topics.

By considering these points, you can pinpoint a memory that not only resonates with you but also captivates your readers.

3. Examples of Unique Essay Topics

Now, let's explore some unique and captivating essay topics that revolve around childhood memories. These topics are sure to stand out from the crowd:

• "The Day I Discovered a Hidden Treasure in Grandma's Attic."
• "A Magical Encounter with a Friendly Stray Cat: My Childhood Confidant."
• "The Great Lemonade Stand Adventure: Lessons in Entrepreneurship."
• "An Unexpected Journey: Getting Lost and Finding My Way Home."
• "The Night Our Backyard Turned into an Enchanted Forest."

These topics offer a fresh perspective on childhood memories, ensuring your essay engages your audience from start to finish.

4. Crafting Inspiring Paragraphs and Phrases

To bring your childhood memories essay to life, you need to infuse it with captivating paragraphs and phrases. Here are some samples to inspire your writing:

"As I climbed up the creaky attic stairs, the dust danced in the sunlight streaming through the cracks. There, amidst forgotten relics of the past, I stumbled upon a weathered, leather-bound journal that held secrets from generations long gone." "The stray cat, with its fur as soft as memories themselves, became my confidant. We'd spend endless afternoons together, sharing secrets only a child and a feline friend could understand." "With a cardboard sign in hand and a heart full of dreams, I set up my first lemonade stand on that scorching summer day. The taste of success was as sweet as the lemonade itself." "As twilight descended, the stars emerged in our enchanted backyard. Fireflies danced, and the trees whispered secrets to my young ears, painting a canvas of wonder and magic."

Feel free to use these samples as a starting point for your own narrative. Remember, the key is to paint a vivid and emotional picture with your words.

With these insights, you're well on your way to crafting an outstanding childhood memories essay that will leave a lasting impression. Embrace the nostalgia, choose a unique topic, and let your words transport your readers back to your cherished moments of the past.

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Best Childhood Memories Essay Ideas: 94 Narrative Topics [2024]

Many people believe that childhood is the happiest period in a person’s life. It’s not hard to see why. Kids have nothing to care or worry about, have almost no duties or problems, and can hang out with their friends all day long.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

An essay about childhood gives an opportunity to plunge into your memories. All you need to do is recollect those happy days and write a brilliant essay! In this article by Custom-Writing.org , you’ll find great tips and topic ideas to kickstart the process.

• 🔝 Top 10 Topics
• 💡 Coming Up with Ideas
• 🧸 Childhood Memories Essay Topics
• ✍️ Writing Examples & Guide
• 🔍 References

🔝 Top 10 Childhood Topics to Write About

• Your favorite holiday memory.
• Your brightest memories of winter.
• Your earliest school memory.
• Your first visit to a farm.
• What was your favorite toy?
• Do you remember your granny’s kitchen?
• Your childhood memories of your parents.
• Your best childhood friend.
• Things that you initially disliked at school.
• Experiments with physics in childhood.

💡 Coming Up with Childhood Memories Essay Ideas

Perhaps you got lost in your memories and cannot choose the best one to describe in your essay. Or maybe you have a bad memory and cannot recollect something specific to write about. If that’s the case, here are some recommendations for you.

Childhood Memories List: How to Write

Don’t know where to start? Try creating a list of your memories to decide which ones you need for your paper.

There are our top tips on making a childhood memories list:

• Write down everything that comes to your mind. What are some significant memories from your childhood? Every little experience starting with your earliest memory matters. Of course, you don’t need all of this information for your essay. Still, it will help your brain to start working in the right direction.
• Try to focus on specific things such as holidays, trips, or food. Everybody’s favorite childhood memories are often connected with them. Remarkable events also might include school, neighborhood, hometown, presents you received, and your achievements. Nostalgia is your best friend in this case.
• Divide your memories into categories. Good childhood experiences such as receiving a dream present or adopting a pet belong to one category. Life-changing events, key achievements, and unfortunate accidents can go into other categories.
• Try not to avoid bad childhood memories. It’s not the most pleasant thing in this task. But sometimes, writing about bad situations or challenges is a good strategic decision for your paper. It can also help your personal growth.

How to Remember Childhood Memories

What is your earliest memory? A frightening fall down the stairs? Or perhaps blowing candles on your second birthday? Whatever the content, it is probably short and vague.

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When we grow older, our recollections of early childhood become fragmentary . In fact, a profound memory loss occurs, which psychologists call infantile amnesia (you can learn more about it from the article “ New perspectives on childhood memory ”). Memories formed during early childhood are more fragile than those formed later in life.

That’s why it’s a great idea to write down our childhood recollections. This way, they’ll stay with us even after they lose their rich vividness and start to fade altogether.

Naturally, you can’t keep everything in your head. Some childhood memories will stay with you forever, while others vanish during your teenage years. Remembering something you have forgotten is not an easy task.

Here’s a way out: use this checklist to recall your childhood experiences:

Feeling completely out of ideas? Or maybe you can’t think of a specific topic? Keep reading to learn how to generate new ideas and write a great childhood memories essay.

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🧸 Childhood Memory Essays Topics List

Favorite childhood memory ideas.

• Meeting Santa at a mall
• A gift you’ve created yourself
• First time you stayed up all night
• Your first visit to an amusement park
• Your favorite children’s book or comic
• Your best childhood camping memory
• The craziest fact you’ve learned as a child
• Memory about winning a school competition
• What was the most fun school assignment?
• Your favorite food at the elementary school cafeteria

Early Childhood Memories Essay Topics

Kindergarten is often the place where kids start socializing for the first time. Think about your experiences with friends and teachers, as well as with your family. These topic ideas will help you get on the right track:

• The first day in kindergarten . Kindergarten is a new world for a child. It has an unfamiliar environment, new people, and rules. This essay can aim at discussing feelings and expectations that accompany a child on their first day.
• Describe the first pet you had in early childhood. Almost all families have a pet that they love. Often pets are given to children as presents. This essay can relate the best moments spent with a pet when you were little.
• A relative who was closest to you in early childhood. Every child has a family member with whom they enjoy spending time. It could easily be a parent, a grandparent, a sibling , or perhaps an uncle. Write about exciting moments related to your beloved relatives.
• Your first childhood hobby . Most people had hobbies when they were kids. This initial interest sometimes determines one’s future occupation. Here, you can describe the activities you used to do as a little child. Focus on the events associated with your first hobby.
• Festive events in kindergarten . During the whole year, people celebrate many holidays. Naturally, kindergartens hold festive events to amuse children. This essay can portray the unforgettable celebrations in kindergarten .
• Describe family gatherings from your childhood.
• A typical day in your kindergarten.
• What’s the first birthday celebration you remember?
• Activities or games in kindergarten .
• Your first Halloween costume.
• Things that you didn’t like in kindergarten.
• Write about your relationship with nature in early childhood.
• Describe a performance you took part in when you were little.
• What was the best teacher in your kindergarten like?
• Discuss the book or story you loved the most in early childhood.

Elementary School Memories Essay Topics

Would you like to look back at your elementary school days? This section is just what you need. Check out these ideas and get inspired:

• How you met your first teacher. Teachers lead children through a complicated yet exciting path. That’s why we all remember our teachers, especially the first day of meeting them. This essay can recount the brightest moments associated with this event. Additionally, you might describe the teacher’s appearance and personality .
• The most challenging lesson in elementary school. You can probably recall numerous lessons from your school years. This essay can aim at describing positive and negatives aspects of studies, as well as your favorite classes.
• Memories about extracurricular activities in school. It could be sports, artistic pursuits, or activities related to specific subjects. Describe your personal preferences and say who inspired you to start doing them.
• Celebration events at school. Celebrations create the brightest and most joyful memories. In this essay, you can share personal experiences about such events, be it school performances, shows, or games.
• Who was your best school teacher ? Describe the personalities of your favorite teachers and explain why you liked them.
• Write about a person who helped with school lessons .
• What did your first school building look like?
• Describe what you daydreamed about in school.
• Wonderful hikes or trips organized by the school.
• What were your plans for the future growing up?
• Write about going to a museum with your class.
• Memories of participation in school sports activities.
• Recall your participation in writing for a school newspaper .
• Did you take part in any important school activities or events?

Happy Childhood Memories Essay Topics

When writing about your childhood, you’d probably prefer recalling happy events rather than sad ones. But what if you don’t know which pleasant memory to choose? This list will help you make up your mind!

• The best birthday party ever. Recall the most exciting details associated with it. For example, describe some beautiful presents and a celebratory atmosphere.
• The day you’ve met your first love . Write about the impressions, feelings, and the most treasured memories associated with that day.
• Recall the best day spent with your childhood friend. Recount the activities and events that made you happy.
• The most significant achievement in childhood. Recall your achievements connected with the studies, sports, or arts. You can start by describing the task you’ve had, explain its importance, and thank the people who helped you.
• The day you made somebody happy . This essay can describe the instances where you helped others. What were your motivations, and why did it make you happy?
• Describe the best school gathering you can remember. Schools often organize parties where students can have fun. This essay can recount the circumstances and special moments related to such a party.
• Recall a fictional character you liked the most in childhood.
• Write about the best present you gave to someone when you were little.
• Describe the best surprise made by friends or relatives in childhood.
• The most wonderful journey or trip in childhood.
• A sad event that changed things for the better.
• What were the happiest summer holidays in your childhood like?
• Chronicle the day when your childhood dream came true.
• Write about your childhood fear and how you overcame it.
• Tell about getting a good grade for an important assignment.
• Describe the first home where your family lived.

Funny Childhood Memories Essay Ideas

Writing about a funny event is perhaps the best option you can choose. You’ll enjoy describing it, and your readers will appreciate you for making them laugh! Here are some prompts to kickstart the creative process.

• Recollect your childhood actions that make your relatives laugh. Children often behave in interesting, comical, and amusing ways. This essay can detail some fun moments that your parents remember.
• Amusing and funny moments in your favorite cartoons . You probably remember many great cartoons from your childhood. What made them funny? Do you still find them entertaining?
• The funniest pranks you did at school. If you were a mischievous child, this topic is for you. Recall various funny, elaborate, or even failed pranks you did at school.
• Describe the first time you rode a bicycle . Learning to ride a bike is a staple of many childhoods. It’s challenging, but once you master it, you will never forget how to ride it!
• What tricks used to help you pass difficult exams? Usually, students make cribs or copy someone else’s answers. You can describe more creative ways of passing exams.
• Poking fun at younger siblings . If you have brothers and sisters, you probably tease each other. How do you feel about such activities? Do you both have a good laugh, or did somebody get upset?
• Playing superheroes in childhood. Many children have favorite superheroes such as Batman , Spiderman, Ironman, and others. What were your personal favorites? Did you try to imagine you have superpowers?
• Describe the most ridiculous haircut you’ve had when you were little.
• Funny moments with your school teachers.
• Did you have an imaginary friend? What were they like?
• Trying to cook in childhood.
• What tricks did you use to hide bad marks from your parents?
• Attempts to renovate your childhood room.

Childhood Christmas Memories Topics

Christmas is the favorite holiday of many children. Were you one of them? Choose your essay title from this list on Christmas memories:

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

• What is the best Christmas present from your childhood? Describe the present, the wrapping, and your emotions related to it. Why did you want it so much? You can also try to remember where this present is now.
• Describe a family Christmas trip that you enjoyed the most as a child. Answer the following questions. What were the new places you have seen? What were the new people you met? How much time did you spend there? Did you feel homesick? What did you feel when you returned home?
• What was your favorite pastime during the Christmas holidays in childhood? For example, you can write about watching cartoons or playing with your siblings. Or maybe you enjoyed winter sports and walking with your friends.
• Was Christmas your favorite holiday in childhood? Explain why or why not. Create a list of the things that you did and didn’t enjoy. You can also compare Christmas with other holidays. Find several arguments to defend your opinion.
• Describe the best Christmas present you gave somebody in childhood . It can be something you made yourself or bought. Explain why you chose this gift and what was the recipient’s reaction. What did you want to show with this present? Was it your idea to give it? How did you choose it? Answer these questions in your essay.
• What are your favorite Christmas memories ? You have a wide choice here. You can describe family get-togethers, receiving or giving presents, eating sweets, or having fun while resting from school.
• Describe your favorite childhood Christmas photo . Explain why it is so valuable to you. Define the people or objects in the picture. Try to remember who took it and what camera was they used. Also, provide some information about the time and place.
• Write about your family’s Christmas traditions .
• Describe your favorite Christmas decorations in childhood.
• When was the time you stopped believing in Santa Claus?
• What was your favorite Christmas movie in childhood?
• Write about the Christmas dishes did you enjoy the most as a child.
• What was your favorite Christmas TV special ?
• What were your favorite Christmas songs when you were little?
• Describe the perfect Christmas Eve of your childhood.
• Tell about the friends you liked to invite to your Christmas parties.

These recollections can form a great foundation for your essay. Because childhood is often the best time in a person’s life, writing essays on your childhood experiences can be a real pleasure. If you try to be creative and choose a unique topic, you are sure to succeed in writing an impressive essay.

✍️ “My Childhood Memories” Essay Writing Guide

Writing about your childhood is an exciting assignment that has some peculiarities. Let’s explore some of them.

Childhood Memories Essay: Dos and Don’ts

Your main task is to make the reader feel like they’ve experienced the memory you described. There are certain elements that you can include in your essay to make it stand out. Similarly, some things are better to avoid.

Keep these things in mind, and you will surely write a perfect composition.

Childhood Memories Essay: Step by Step

Follow these steps of the essay writing process, and you will see that writing a good essay on your childhood memories is not as challenging as it may seem.

Narrative Essay on Childhood Memories: Outline

Every essay must have a proper structure. That’s why it’s useful to make a short outline before you start writing. It will keep you from losing your way as you write your essay. It also saves you time! If you have a plan, you won’t miss any important points in your essay.

Your paper should include:

After you’ve finished writing, revise and edit your essay . Make sure your paragraphs are written in a logical order. Read your essay aloud so that you can see how it flows and determine where you need to improve it.

Try our memory-activating prompts and follow these writing tips to compose your perfect childhood memories essay! If you’re not sure that you can write a good paper on your own, you can always ask our experts to help you out.

Further reading:

• School Days Essay: How to Describe a Memorable Event
• Growing Up Essay: Great Ideas for Your College Assignment
• Writing Essay about Someone Who has Made an Impact on Your Life
• Excellent Remembering a Person Essay: Free Writing Guidelines
• Life Experience Essay: How to Write a Brilliant Paper

🔗 References

• The Fate of Childhood Memories: Children Postdated Their Earliest Memories as They Grew Older
• Can You Trust Your Earliest Childhood Memories?: BBC
• How to Start Writing Your Own Childhood Memories for Posterity: HobbyLark
• 650 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing: The New York Times
• Bright Side Readers Shared 14 Childhood Stories and We Plunged Into Their Memories Together: Brightside
• Great Questions: StoryCorps
• Introductions and Conclusions: University of Toronto
• Make a List: Childhood Memories: Practical Parenting
• Tips to Retrieve Old Memories: Harvard University
• Make the Most of Your Memory: 10 Tips for Writing About Your Life: Writer’s Digest
• Childhood Christmas Memories: DNA Explained
• What Do Your Earliest Childhood Memories Say about You?: The Conversation
• Can’t Remember Your Childhood? What Might Be Going On: Healthline
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Essays About Childhood Memories: Top 5 Examples

Our childhood memories are often some of the most cherished experiences of our lives, so if you are writing essays about childhood memories, you can start by reading our essay examples and writing prompts.  

Childhood is the period in our lives when we learn about our feelings, social skills, and the world around us. When we think of our childhood, we remember the years when we learn the most basic life skills, from being able to talk to the difference between “good” and “bad.”

Many fondly look back on their childhood memories, recalling when life was much more straightforward. They remember their parents, grandparents, favorite foods, friends, and essential experiences, among many other things. It is easy to imagine the idyllic, innocent life most of us had before, especially in our challenging times. 

If you want to write essays about your childhood memories, go over the essay examples, and writing prompts featured below. 

1. Happy childhood memories – and an old mix-tape by Séamas O’Reilly

2. favorite childhood memory by david dziegielewski, 3. a reflection of my childhood by shivani bajaj.

• 4.  I Would Have Liked Childhood More Without the Pressure to Grow Up by Jane Coaston

5. Lessons from my mother: A reflection on motherhood by GraceAnna Castleberry

1. your favourite childhood memory, 2. the importance of positive memories from childhood, 3. memories of your childhood home, 4. important figures from childhood, 5. the value of childhood memories, 6. childhood vs. adulthood, 7. childhood food memories.

“For the last few years I lived here, I was the same height as I am now, so why am I astonished at the low hang of countertops, or that I can catch my reflection in the mirror that hangs high on the wall? Sometimes peering at that tired, but devilishly handsome, man in the mirror evokes the same, bittersweet feeling of vertigo you get from visiting your old primary school, as you stand 3ft higher than you’re supposed to, like some befuddled Lemuel Gulliver.”

In his essay, O’Reilly reflects on his time visiting his father in his childhood house. He recalls his memories inside the house alongside his son’s experiences today and how they are similar. He also explains how pleasant it is to be in the house again, as it evokes warm, cozy memories of his upbringing. While much has changed about the house, every visit remains as nostalgic as ever.

You might also find these essays about camping trips helpful.  

“I always smile when I remember fishing with my Father. Many years have now since passed since those Saturday morning fishing trips. Time has taught me that the bond between Father and Son is what made those memories special to me. Now when I close my eyes I can remember those days since passed with joy and with a remembrance of the love I have for my Father.”

In this short essay, Dziegielewski describes memories of fishing with his father. He recalls every detail, from the fresh smell of the lake to the sound of a fishing bobber. Most importantly, however, he remembers how his father taught him the skill of fishing. This made him love his father, even more, allowing him to look back on these memories fondly.  You can also check out these essays about development .

“Water also drives many of our decisions — from the seafood we eat to our most romantic moments, and from where we live, to the sports we enjoy, and the ways we vacation and relax. We know instinctively that being by water makes us healthier, happier, reduces stress, and brings us peace.”

Bajaj recalls a memorable experience in which she dove into a deep pool after her mother had told her not to. She remembers the feelings of curiosity and excitement she felt and how despite her nearly drowning, she remembers that time happily. Reflecting on the memory, she also explains how water has helped her become more satisfied, peaceful, and happy. Our childhood memories shape us and provide us with the basis for the rest of our lives.

4.   I Would Have Liked Childhood More Without the Pressure to Grow Up by Jane Coaston

“I felt like I was given no time for trial and error. My choices were either to make the very selective local club soccer team or never play the sport again, be a genius or give up. Because being bad at anything was the worst possible sin I could imagine committing.”

Coaston writes about a more negative aspect of her childhood: the constant pressure to “not be a kid anymore.” She recalls several things expected of her, including having exceptional grades while being athletically gifted at the same time, with “no time for trial and error.” She feels everything was expected of her, and she did not have time to discover herself by making mistakes. She wishes parents would not rush their children along and let kids be kids for a while.  Check out these essays about growing up .

“I remember calling home once when I was spending the night at a friend’s house. I was homesick and just wanted to come back home. It was near midnight, but my mom drove over and picked me up. It was in these little moments that I especially felt loved. These were moments when I really needed my mom, and she was there for me. As a mother of a one-year-old now, I treasure these moments too.”

In her essay, Castleberry recalls her childhood memories involving her mother, including ones in which her mother entertained her and her friends and picked her up from a late night at a friend’s house. She remembers the small things her mother would do for her and how she was always there when she needed her. In raising her daughter, Castleberry strives to be the same mother that her mother was for her. 

7 Writing Prompts On Essays About Childhood Memories

Think back to one beloved childhood memory and retell the story in your essay. Then, describe all of the details you can recall, such as; who was involved, where the memory took place, what events transpired, and why it is such an important memory. Next, provide context by explaining the circumstances behind the memory, and most important of all, be sure to explain how this memory made you feel. Finally, use descriptive language to convey why this memory is your favorite.

Whether good or bad, people say childhood memories are crucial to who you are today. Why is this the case? In your essay, write about the value of keeping your childhood memories close. Then, write about any lessons you learned from them, and include a mix of supporting details from research and your opinions. 

Describe the home you lived in as a child- the layout, the neighborhood, the living conditions, and whatever else you can think of. Did you like it? Write about how it compares to your current home, and if you still live in the same place today, describe how it has changed from before and how it is similar. 

You can also write about a childhood figure who impacted you, such as one of your parents, grandparents, uncles, or aunts. Explain why you remember this person so well and the impact they have had on your life. For inspiration, you can look through an old photo album with photos of that person. 

Recall your childhood and think about this: overall, is it a childhood others would enjoy? Did you have a “good” childhood, or If there is anything, you can also include things you would change about your childhood you could. In this essay, delve into the value of your childhood memories and write about any that impacted your life for the better.

Compare yourself now to how you were back then. In most cases, much has changed; however, what similarities do you see between you now and in your childhood memories? If you wish to be more like “childhood you” in some ways, explain these as well. 

For a fun essay, write about your favorite food growing up. Include a brief description of how to prepare it and perhaps some of its history. What significance does this food have to you? You can also write about any memories you associate the dish with, as these might explain why you enjoyed that food so much. 

Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review .

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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When Do Childhood Memories Start? Earlier Than You Might Think

W hen do memories start? One of the great joys of parenthood is introducing your kid to the world and giving them a foundation of good childhood memories on which they can start building their life. A major way that parents try to build memories is through adventures. Travel is easy enough when they’re infants (a baby is basically carry-on luggage that occasionally cries), but it gets trickier by the time they’re toddlers. Because hitting the road with a preschooler requires NASA-level strategic planning, many parents simply stay put, resigned to the fact that very young kids have childhood amnesia and won’t remember anyway. But building up a healthy reserve of future nostalgia with your kids is always a good investment.

You may have heard that children don’t form memories until about age 3 , but that’s a bit of an oversimplification. According to a pair of leading experts in childhood memory, your 2-year-old may not recall their first spin on the teacups like you will (how could you forget that face?). But they will retain a different, more mysterious kind of memory — one that lasts a lifetime.

Kids Remember Differently Than Adults Do

Adults might think of memories in categorical terms, like “Remember that great restaurant we went to on our honeymoon?” or “Did I forget our anniversary?” But according to Nora Newcombe, Ph.D. , a psychology professor at Temple University and co-director of the Infant & Child Laboratory, memory is more than a mental picture. “One of the big contributions of psychology and neuroscience over the past few decades is to unpack memories into different categories.”

The two categories, Newcombe explains, are explicit memory and implicit memory. Both are subdivisions of long-term memory and begin developing very early. Here’s how they differ:

• Explicit Memory: Requires conscious recall and is generally associated with a time and a place — the autobiographical version of memory you’re used to.
• Implicit Memory: Not about specific events, but instead is more of an unconscious, emotional recollection.

Your kids’ memories of the pancakes you made for them on Saturdays? Explicit. The warm, fuzzy feelings whenever they pass an IHOP? Implicit. Your ability to remember what you had for breakfast this morning? Questionable.

What Is Childhood Amnesia?

Kids begin forming explicit childhood memories around the 2-year mark, but the majority are still implicit memories until they’re about 7. It’s what researchers, like Carole Peterson, Ph.D. , from Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland, call “childhood amnesia.”

She says that age 3, or about preschool age, is the turning point when explicit memories begin to get more frequent, detailed, and adult-like. By age 6 or 7, your kid’s memory is similar to yours. (So, maybe your 8-year-old can help you remember what you ate for breakfast this morning?)

Form Collective Family Memories

Your kid, thankfully, won’t remember their birth. But if you keep bringing up that story about how you raced their mom to the hospital in the worst blizzard of the century, they’ll have a memory of the event as if they white-knuckled the drive beside you. “It becomes part of their memory, too,” Newcombe says. “In some sense, this is a false memory because they didn’t experience it. But it’s a true memory because it did happen.”

In experiments, researchers have found that it’s possible to introduce false details into people’s memories. “It’s both good and bad that our memories are plastic,” Newcombe says. “We can incorporate new things, but we have to remember that our memories are fallible.” So, scrapbook responsibly.

Reinforce Good Childhood Memories

Almost no one has enough brain RAM to recall everything that happens in their lives. But, according to Peterson, memories that are suffused with emotion and fit into a greater context are more likely to form earlier and last longer.

You can help this process by talking to your kids about experiences from their lives. “Kids’ memories are more coherent when there’s a context of who, what, where, when, why, and how,” Peterson says. It turns out your folks were onto something with those vacation slideshows.

Practice Nostalgia With Your Kids

Childhood memory experts are beginning to think that parents talking a lot about the past plays a big role in the number of memories kids form and how early they form them. This may be especially true for fathers and sons.

Peterson conducted a study of parental influence on early memories that examined the effect of gender-specific parent-child combinations. In the experiment, young adults (ages 18-28) were asked to recall as many memories involving parents as they could from their preschool years (before age 6). “We found that when you had warm parents that spent a lot of time talking about the past, those males remembered more of early life, but also had memories from further back in their lives,” Peterson says. “And that’s particularly the case for fathers talking to sons.”

It Doesn’t Matter If Kids Remember

The next time you look at your preschooler and think, “They’ll never remember this,” you’re right — they probably won’t. But take comfort in the fact that just because they won’t have total recall of these formative years, they will remember the important things that make them better people: Parents take care of you, and the world is a good place.

So don’t judge an experience by whether or not your preschooler will cherish it forever. “If the kid has fun, even if they don’t remember the experience, that’s nothing to sneeze at in terms of forming a worldview that life can be enjoyable,” Newcombe says. “It sets a global expectation that the world is a nice place and people are good to me. These are the kinds of things people are building up in the early years.”

Essay on Childhood Memories in 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 Words

Here are some beautiful essays on Childhood Memories in 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 words for class 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. We have added an essay on 10 lines too. I hope you will love these essays. 

In This Blog We Will Discuss

Essay on Childhood Memories in 200 Words

Childhood memories are memories that we can’t forget ever. Some incidents are so bright in our minds that we recall it again and again. We all have tons of memories in childhood. These memories help us to build our character and personality, that’s why childhood memories are hugely important in our life. 

When people think or discuss these memories, then they feel very happy and delighted. That’s why we need to think and write about these memories. I have some really good memories from my childhood. I spent a long time in rural areas. 

I’ve completed my school from a village primary school. That was a very good experience for me. I can remember lots of incidents from there. I went to visit a village fair with my father and we bought lots of toys for me and my siblings. 

I still can feel the ‘Nagordola’, lots of people, colorful shops, and songs playing on loudspeakers when I close my eyes. These feelings and memories are priceless. I wish if I could go back to my past and see childhood again, that would be amazing. But I know it’s not possible. I miss my childhood a lot. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 300 Words

Introduction: 

Memories are some special visualization on our brain that helps us to recall some past incidents that happened to our life. It shapes our personality for the future. Sometimes we remember our long-ago past memories and it makes us happy. 

Childhood memories are the best example of that. We all have lots of childhood memories and these are golden. These memories are vivid in our minds always. I know some memories could be hard to remember but most of them are vivid in our brain.

My Childhood Memories:

I have so many memories that I can remember now. Most of them are related to my family , parents, and siblings. Because I have spent most of my childhood times with them. My father was a government worker then and he had very little time to spend with his family.

But still, he managed to spend a huge time with us. I loved his activities. He took us to different places for a picnic. My mom used to cook very delicious meals for us. I can remember, we were staying at a village in Bihar and it was the house of an uncle. We went for a long drive from there. 

There was an amazing side view on the road. I loved the villages of Bihar. The people were friendly. I spent an amazing time with my cousins there. These memories are very bright on my mind and I love to think about all those days. 

Conclusion: 

I know your childhood memories are also amazing and you love to think about these memories a lot. These memories make us happy. I love to think about these amazing days. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 400 Words

Childhood is that time when we had nothing to worry about. We were free and only spent time with our fellow childhood friends. We could do anything. We had no limitation to do anything. 

I had an awesome childhood that I love to recall again and again. I wish I could get back to my childhood. That is a mind-blowing part of my life. 

When I think about my childhood, it reminds a few of my friends, such as Satish, Jay, and Ganesh. We lived in a rural area in Bihar. That area was very beautiful nature. I loved spending time with nature. When we were students of class 1 or 2, we used to leave school and go to the river. 

I caught lots of fish in the river. It was a very beautiful hilly river. I wish I could go back to that amazing place. It makes me very happy when I recall these memories. I loved to jump into the water and swim there. I promise I was an excellent swimmer back then. 

We also went to different places to catch birds and do different types of naughty stuff. Though I had to follow some strict rules at home, still I was super naughty. My father was strict but he loves us very much. 

My siblings were very good with me. I used to spend lots of time with them at home. We had different types of games to play together. I loved playing cricket and football mostly. 

First Day at School: 

The first day at school is the best childhood memory that I can recall. That was a tough day for me. I was not a good boy who wanted to go to school with his own wish. I did different things to not go to school. 

But finally, my father bought me some books, a school bag, and a school uniform and I agreed to go to school. The first day was full of scariness for me. We went to the headmaster’s room and he asked me some easy questions. I knew the answers but I was unable to answer due to lots of pressure going on in my head. 

I love to think about all of my childhood memories, these memories are my own and that’s what pushed me to create my personality and character. We all need to appreciate our memories in childhood. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 500 Words

We all have lots of past memories in our lives. But I think childhood memories are the best memories that make us happy and delighted. You can’t deny that we all have some memories that are very special to us. 

I have some childhood memories too that I never can forget. Today I will talk about some of these memories here. 

Importance of Childhood Memories: 

Do some people think that childhood memories are really important? I think it is. Because these memories make a huge impact on our personality and lifestyle. It helps us to be that person that we want to be. 

We should never ignore our past memories. These are big lessons in our life. That’s why I think it has huge importance in our life. 

My Childhood Memories: 

I have some amazing memories. Most of them are with my family, my parents, my siblings, and my grandmother . I have three siblings and they are very close to my heart. We always had a great time together. I spent my entire childhood in a neighborhood in Delhi. 

I had lots of friends there. I am still connected with a few of them. We spent really good times together. I loved playing cricket in the afternoon. I have lots of good memories playing with them. I can remember the first day of school. 

It was very exciting for me. I always was an attentive student and I used to make good results in the class. My teachers loved me a lot for that. These memories are very sweet and I wish I could go back there and experience the same thing again. 

I used to visit my native village sometimes. That was another exciting journey for me. I spent an amazing time with my cousins there. We went for a picnic and did lots of crazy things. 

A Horrible Experience of Childhood:

Along with lots of good experiences I have some horrible childhood experiences too. When I was five years old, I didn’t know how to swim. And that time I was in the village. We were playing football and there was a pond near the field. 

When the ball went to the pond, someone went and picked it. A boy thought I might know how to swim and he pushed me to the pond. When I was trying to come out of the water but couldn’t he was laughing and thinking that I was making fun. 

But when he realized he jumped and took me off the water. That was a very shocking memory that I can’t forget. It could be worse. 

I love to think about my old childhood memories. These memories bring a broad smile to my face. I know it’s the same for everyone. These memories are very much cute and loving. It could be a topic of gossip too. People love sharing things about their childhood, I do. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 600 Words

Childhood is the best stage of human life where they can spend time without any worry and pressure. We all have had that amazing time. The best part of childhood is spending time with fellow kids. We all have some good and some bad memories that we can recall from childhood. 

There are lots of memories that we have forgotten and some we can remember slightly. I am going to share some memories from my childhood that I still can’t forget. I think these are the golden memories and the time was priceless. 

I have been raised in a big family with lots of loving members. I have all the sweet memories with them. I especially want to mention my grandmother. She was an extraordinary lady. I have two siblings and we used to play in the garden in front of my home . 

My father bought us different types of toys and playing equipment. I loved playing cricket from childhood and still play that often. My little sister was like my assistant. She was always with me whatever I do and wherever I go. 

We used to steal pickles from the refrigerator that my grandma made. I still can feel the smell and taste of that pickle when I look back at the memories. My dad was a super busy person, but still, he spent enough time with us. I can remember a picnic at a zoo where the entire family went. 

My mom took some delicious food items there. I can’t remember what exactly the dishes were, but they were amazing in taste. That was an incredible day. We sometimes visited our native village and that was the best moment for me and my cousins. 

We got enough space to run, play football, and do all the stuff that we can’t do in the city. When I think about my childhood, that takes a large part there. Because I have so many amazing memories related to village life. 

My First Day at School: 

The first day at school is a beautiful memory that I can remember clearly. That was a very special event for me. I was very excited. I have been preparing for school and worked very hard for three months. My mother was also working very hard to teach me all the basic things such as alphabets and a few rhymes. 

I was pretty confident. I got my new uniform, school bag, some books, and new shoes. And the day came and they took me to school. That is quite a popular school in the city. My parents took me to the headmaster’s room. 

He was a gentleman and he greeted us properly. I can remember he asked me some basic questions and I answered them confidently. He called an assistant teacher and sent me to my classroom . A class was going on there already and I joined it. I found tons of boys and girls my age. 

I made some friends on the first day. I went back and found my parents waiting for me. That was a pleasant experience for me. I will never forget that day. My parents were very supportive and that’s why everything was easy for me. 

Conclusion:

Childhood memories are very important in our life. We should remind ourselves of all the beautiful moments. When we think about our childhood it makes us laugh and we feel very genuine. 

That’s very important in our life. These little memories can shape our personality in the future. These are good times and they teach us how to overcome some problems in real life. 

10 Lines Essay on Childhood Memories

1. We all have lots of beautiful memories from our childhood that make us extremely happy.

2. This memory recalls are priceless and everyone loves to talk about them. 

3. I have some exciting memories of my own childhood. 

4. We were living in a village when I was a kid. I spent my entire childhood there. 

5. It was possible for me to experience lots of exciting things that a city kid can’t.

6. I learned swimming at the age of 5 and I used to swim in the nearest river with my fellow childhood friends. 

7. My parents had some rules to follow and of course, they were extremely strict. But still, we managed to find time for doing lots of naughty activities. 

8. I have most of my memories with my siblings and my cousins. 

9. These memories are priceless and I keep smiling when I think about these golden days. 

10. I love all these childhood memories and these are my base of personality. 

How do you write a childhood memories essay? 

To write a childhood memory, you need to look back to your childhood. It’s a very important topic for school and college students. By writing on this topic, you will get an opportunity to look back at your past memories. It is not hard to write about childhood memories. You need to think a bit and you will come with tons of beautiful memories. 

How would you describe your childhood memories? 

To describe your childhood memories, you need to write them first and then you can do some edits to make it look good. Here are some described essays on childhood memories, you can use them for your study purpose. 

Why is Childhood Memories important?

Childhood memories are very important for us because our memories help us to build our personality and make us the perfect human. It’s a huge lesson in our life. 

What can be a common childhood memory for all?

‘The first day at school’ could be a common memory for all. There are some memories that are related to our parents and siblings, they could be common for all too. 

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By the Book

Judi Dench’s Eyesight Keeps Her From Reading, but Not From Books

“They’re snapshots of the past: first-night gifts, holidays abroad, memories of lost friends and loved ones,” the award-winning actress says. Her latest, written with Brendan O’Hea, is “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent.”

Credit... Rebecca Clarke

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What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

That’s an impossible question. The best in 89 years? How do I know? I remember being given A.P. Wavell’s “Other Men’s Flowers” as a birthday present when I was young. It’s a collection of poetry, which opened my eyes to the power of verse. But then I also adored “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” by Patricia Highsmith . My husband, Michael [Williams], bought it for me as a holiday read. I devoured it and didn’t want it to end. I had to ration myself to a couple of pages a day.

What’s the last great book you read?

“ Dormouse Has a Cold,” by Julia Donaldson . It’s a lift-the-flap children’s book, sent to me when I was recovering from a cold.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

After lights out at boarding school when I was 15. I was in bed under the covers with a torch reading Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”

How do you organize your books?

I don’t. I have so many books, but never enough shelves, so I have books everywhere — piled up on tables, chairs, running along window sills, books in every available nook and cranny. Because of my eyesight I can no longer read, but I love being surrounded by books — they’re snapshots of the past: first-night gifts, holidays abroad, memories of lost friends and loved ones. I still have my father’s individual copies of the Temple Shakespeare from 1903. They’re small, red-leather-bound copies with gilt lettering on the cover, and if I hold one I can be transported back to my childhood and family quizzes about Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s writing, you say in the new book, “has the capacity to make us feel less alone.” What other writing has done that for you?

Oh so many — Iris Murdoch, Chekhov, Zoë Heller, J.D. Salinger — any writer who can reflect us back to ourselves and help us discover who we are.

You mention seeing a theater ghost in the book. Do you enjoy ghost stories?

I love a good ghost story. I remember being on a family camping holiday in Scotland when my daughter, Finty, was young. We snuggled up under a blanket, while Michael poured himself a large vodka and tonic and read us “The Mezzotint,” by M.R. James. It was thrilling.

Did you ever read backstage to pass the time?

No, there’s never time. And in any case I couldn’t, as I’d be worried about becoming too engrossed in the story and missing my cue.

What book, fiction or nonfiction, best captures life and work in the theater?

Again, there are so many, but I’ll opt for “National Service,” by Richard Eyre. It’s such an honest account of the ups and downs of running a big organization like the National Theater.

What made Brendan O’Hea a good interviewer for this book?

We’re old friends and have no secrets from each other. We also have the same sense of humor and a shared passion for Shakespeare. He’s tenacious in his questioning, which probably means that I’ve revealed more about my personal life and acting technique in this book than I have in any other .

Does the Shakespeare authorship debate interest you?

No. William Shakespeare from Stratford is good enough for me and I’ll settle for that.

Of all the characters you’ve played across different media, which role felt to you the most fulfilling?

I’d have to say Cleopatra: She’s mercurial, witty, imperious, passionate, irreverent — the whole of life is in that part — you get a real intellectual workout whilst playing her. In fact, I’d like to be getting ready now to go onstage to play her — look, I’m getting goose bumps at the thought.

If an aspiring actor were to read one portion of the book, which would you suggest, and why?

I’d hope there was something to be gleaned from every chapter, but there’s advice on the rehearsal process, coping with first-night nerves and tips on verse speaking. I’m just sharing a little of what I’ve learned over the past 70 years, which will hopefully act as a springboard for aspiring actors to formulate their own ideas. I’d also like to say that we’ve had wonderful feedback from people who aren’t actors — many of whom were put off Shakespeare at school — and, having read our book, felt inspired to revisit his plays.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I’m not a very good cook, so I may have to suggest that people eat before they arrive. I’d certainly invite Shakespeare. I’d ask him if he had another play up his doublet. I’d also like to meet Henrik Ibsen — who I recently discovered I’m related to — although he might scowl if I served him my own version of Norwegian meatballs. And I know Billy Connolly has written a few books, so I’d have to invite him to be assured of a good laugh.

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