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Pro tip: That 'perfect memory' from age 4 might be totally fake
I read a study from Cornell last month that said like 40% of early childhood memories are completely made up or borrowed from photos and stories. I always swore I remembered my 2nd birthday party with the blue cake and balloons but my mom just showed me a video of me sleeping through most of it. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized a core memory was actually just a picture you saw a hundred times?
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joel_jones1mo agoTop Commenter
Used to be one of those people who swore their memories were bulletproof lol. But then my older brother told me this long story about us getting lost at the mall when I was like 3, and I had this whole vivid memory of the food court and the fountain. Turns out he was describing a story from a friend's childhood that I heard him tell at a party. Made me question basically everything I thought I remembered from before kindergarten.
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margareto261mo ago
Same thing happened to me. I started writing down the really old memories and asking family about them, turned out half of them were from stories I'd heard so many times they felt real.
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charlescraig1mo ago
Wait, does that mean the whole memory of my dad's green truck is just from that one photo my grandma kept on the fridge?
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