Suggestibility

It is interesting to think back to my earliest memory. It was the month of May 1988 and my mom had gone into labor and was about to deliver my first sibling. My mom didn’t want to know the sex of the baby so it was a mystery about whether I was going to have a new baby brother or sister. The only solid memory that I have about this day was sitting in the lobby of the hospital when my dad informed me that I now had a new baby brother. I was furious. I remember having a profound sense of disappointment to learn that my new sibling wasn’t a girl. This event occurred when I was three years old, the time in which most people form their first memories.
After learning about infantile amnesia and the development of memory, I am beginning to question whether or not I actually do remember this event and many other events that occurred in my life when I was a small child. For instance, for a while I had the idea that the earliest memory I had was as an infant. I have this image ingrained in my head of lying on my back in a stroller and looking up at the trees as my mom pushed me down the sidewalk. I also have a memory of being led out of a store by a strange man who I, since I did not look at him, thought was my dad. Although these memories are not of great significance, thinking about them and the possibility that I made them up, led me to think about the power of suggestion and how it can even lead to the formation of false memories.
It seems to be quite common for parents to repeatedly tell their children stories about something they did during their childhood. This repetition sometimes causes the child to “remember” a particular event and, therefore, create a memory of that event. In other words, memories are sometimes constructed based entirely on the suggestions of other people such as parents. For example, it may be true that as a little girl, my mom told me time and time again about how she used to push me in my stroller down a sidewalk lined with huge trees. She may have told me this so many times that I eventually started to “remember” and ultimately formed a “memory” of the event. In the case of the stranger, I might have imagined at the time that the strange man was trying to kidnap me, although he probably wasn’t, and because of this thought, I might have formed a false memory that I was almost kidnapped.
Although these things might have happened, it is likely that I actually do not have actual memories of these events. My false memories did not have any serious implications, but the tendency of children to be more suggestible than adults can have legal implications. It is possible that in the case of the stranger, I could have been talked into believing that he was actually trying to kidnap me and I could have gotten him into serious trouble. In any case, it is extremely important to understand that children are highly suggestible and that this tendency can be dangerous.