There’s a good possibility that your first memory might not be your first memory after all. That’s because there’s a new study that suggests 40 percent have a fictional account of what they think is their first memory. In other words, our childhood memories might be deceiving us more than we think and that first sleepover at grandma’s house might have never happened.

According to Science Daily, researchers have conducted one of the largest surveys of people’s first memories. They found out that over 40 percent of people had a first memory which is fictional. Many people’s first memories date from around 3-years-old.

Yet, the study, which was conducted by a team of experts from City, University of London, the University of Bradford and Nottingham Trent University found that many people believe that their first memory happened when they were just 2, or even younger. To find out why, researchers asked adults to recall the memory with their own details. They also said that their first memory shouldn’t be based on a family photograph, family story or an outside source other than direct experience.

From that point, the team of researchers than examined the content, language, and nature and descriptive detail of the memory. They found out that most of the memories dated before the age of two are actually fictional ones that were fragmented from earlier experiences. In other words, they might have been developed by their own or second-hand knowledge of their childhood that came from photographs or family conversations.

The result of the study is that many people recall their earliest memories based on what other people might have told them, rather than what they remember themselves. 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.”

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know that their first memories might in fact be fictional. What complicates things even more is that when they are told that their first memory might be false, they don’t believe it. But then again, as we age, we tend to forget things that happened a day ago, let alone 25 years ago. This leaves a lot of people asking the same question: do you trust your own memories or you don’t? That depends on your selective memory, of course!

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