People tend to piece together feelings and conversations or photographs

So you remember that trip to the sea beach as a two-year-old? Or the time when you had a fracture at three? Chances are it’s just the photograph or a family conversation that is ingrained in your memory, not the incident itself.

Researchers have conducted one of the largest surveys of people’s first memories, finding that nearly 40 per cent of people had a first memory which is fictional.

Current research indicates that people’s earliest memories date from around three to three-and-a-half years of age. However, the study from researchers at City University of London, the University of Bradford and Nottingham Trent University found that 38.6 per cent of a survey of 6,641 people claimed to have memories from two or younger, with 893 people claiming memories from one or younger. This was particularly prevalent among middle-aged and older adults.

To investigate people’s first memories the researchers asked participants to detail their first memory along with their age at the time. In particular, participants were told that the memory itself had to be one that they were certain they remembered. It should not be based on, for example a family photograph, family story, or any source other than direct experience.

Fictional very early memories were seen to be more common in middle-aged and older adults and about 4 in 10 of this group have fictional memories for infancy

As many of these memories dated before the age of two and younger, the researchers theorised that these fictional memories are based on remembered fragments of early experience – such as a pram, family relationships and feeling sad – and some facts or knowledge about their own infancy or childhood which may have been derived from photographs or family conversations.

Fictional very early memories were seen to be more common in middle-aged and older adults and about 4 in 10 of this group have fictional memories for infancy. The study has been published in the journal Psychological Science.

Dr Shazia Akhtar, first author and Senior Research Associate at the University of Bradford said:

“We suggest that what a rememberer has in mind when recalling fictional improbably early memories is an episodic-memory-like mental representation consisting of remembered fragments of early experience and some facts or knowledge about their own infancy/childhood.”