Early Development of Memory

Psychologists have developed experimental techniques for measuring the abilities of babies. They have had to, for babies are attractive little mammals with whom direct communication is impossible. If we could only remember what babies were like—or one baby, at any rate, the one we used to be. Yet every human being was once a baby, and one-way communication with earlier growth stages of one's self is possible across time. It is called memory.

Since I am rather proud of my own memory, I have tried now and then to remember as far back as I could and to identify my earliest clear memory.

I remember, very clearly, a particular book. I recall sitting in a chair, turning the pages of the book and loving the pictures in it. Then I recall wanting the book again and looking about for it, but not finding it and wondering where it was. The feeling of loss was very strong and I remember that feeling to this day.

Finally, I described the memory to my mother in an effort to place it in time. My mother had no trouble. She said, "I remember the book. You were two years old at the time and were mad about it."

I said, "But what happened to it? I remember turning the pages, and then I couldn't find it."

"Sure," she said, "because every page you turned you tore out."

From this I understood that when babies are destructive, they don't mean to be.

Another memory, one that may be even earlier than when I was able to speak, is that of being handed by my father to a strange woman. My father then took up something which, as I looked back on it, must have been the harness, or part of the harness, of a horse. I suppose he had to go somewhere, probably with my mother, and was leaving me with a grandmother or aunt.

I objected to this arrangement. I remember crying madly, while the strange woman held me in her arms and took me off somewhere. The point is that I remember my emotion clearly. I was not frightened. I was not angry. What I wanted to get across was simply, "Hey, I want to be with my father!"

Since I didn't know how to say that, I made the only sound I knew how to make, the one that very often got me the results I wanted. I cried.

The memory of that event has soothed me a bit when I had crying children of my own, and has encouraged me to take the crying as comment on the situation.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why do psychologists have to develop experimental techniques for measuring the abilities of babies?
2. What happened to the book the writer loved to look at when he was two years old?
3. After the writer tried to identify his earliest clear memory, what conclusion did he come to?
4. What is meant by the sentence "If we could only remember ... the one we used to be" (Paragraph 1)?
5. Why did the baby cry in the last four paragraphs?

(Keys.)