I just And it didn't take long as well because I have insomnia, because of the memories going through my mind, and my mind's always so busy and active and I can't sleep well at night because of it, but I found the if I could read Harry Potter, it would put me to sleep as a nine-year-old. So I thought to myself, I'm going to have to find a way where I can read Harry Potter but have my eyes closed. So I thought, I'll have to learn to recite the books, and that's when I taught myself — and I learnt in a rote-learning way — to learn different chapters of the books.
Donna Lu: That's incredible. So if I started reading some passages from different Harry Potter books Indeed by next morning Harry and Ron thought that meeting the three-headed dog had been an excellent adventure, and they were quite keen to have another one. Donna Lu: That's amazing. Donna Lu: Yes it is. That is just incredible.
How long did that take you to learn it all? Rebecca Sharrock: It depends. I'm now learning the new Harry Potter books — I'm learning to recite those as well. I find to do three pages of a chapter…well, I call a page, you know, one side. So, technically that's six pages. But I find on average to do six regular book-sized pages, that takes me an hour. Rebecca Sharrock : Yeah. And I just I break it up too.
I just remember a chunk of it, and it helps if I just have something — a ball in my hand — and just close my eyes, trying to remember. If I'm distracted I can't do it, but if I'm just in silence with a ball, just a little stress ball or something, I can I find a can do it. Donna Lu: Incredible. Rebecca, how would you describe how your memory works?
Rebecca Sharrock: Naturally, the memories come unprompted, or it seems unprompted because I'll just get a scent or I'll see something and subconsciously I'll relive a memory, but I can consciously make myself relive positive memories.
Negative too, but who wants to consciously relive negative memories. But I can consciously make myself relive positive memories, but the season has to match for it to work effectively, because there's no point trying to relive a sum of memory today. Donna Lu: What kinds of memories do you have?
Is it just, for example, is it conversations, or does it extend as well to physical things? Rebecca Sharrock: Just anything I've experienced through my five senses and also emotions, too. So, any smell I get, any sight I see, also physical sensations, too. I can relive the pain of injuries and I can also relive pleasant tastes of food I like.
Donna Lu: So, in thinking about a memory about a certain meal for example you can actually taste that meal again? Donna Lu: That's a pretty handy trick to have if you're eating something you don't really want to be. Donna Lu: Do you link memories to specific dates consciously, or does it just happen?
If I was too young, I still remember the day but I can't date it, as I didn't know about calendars then. It's opposite to recalling memories from dates. It's more a case of recalling dates from memories. I know the earliest dated one, and I know the date because mum told me it was the day I was born.
I remember just being held in a blanket and having something clipped to my ankle, and mum said that was the day I was born. There are memories of emotions before then and also just lying, you know, hunched up like this [hunches].
Rebecca Sharrock: Yeah. And I know whenever I feel stressed, because it was so comforting being in that position…I find I just grab myself like this [hunches in foetal position].
I've never mentioned that before. But it just reminds me of the sensation, just squeezing together like this.
In other words, not only could they remember it, they were smart — they could differentiate much more than we commonly imagine. Gill Bullen's daughter is now in her thirties, but she was already a prodigious talker when she was two-and-a-half. And she said: 'Yes, and I was cold. A few days later I had my week hospital appointment for my twins.
In the car on the way back, we were talking. I said: 'Can you remember anything else about being a baby? In those days, the milk hospitals recommended was called FMA, which had an extremely granular taste. Really not all that pleasant. She said: 'Mummy was there, and daddy was there, and everyone was very happy so I was happy too.
But she can still remember reaching to the top end of her cot, and horrible milk with the hair taste. These are not thoughts I could have planted in her head, because these are not thoughts I had.
Again, the common understanding is that this is poppycock. But there is also plenty of evidence that young children can remember things they forget even a couple of years later. In a study by Dana Van Abbema and Patricia Bauer, kids between seven and nine were interviewed about events from when they were three years old.
Of the seven-year-olds, 60 percent could still remember them. But of another set of kids, aged nine only 36 percent could remember. In short, childhood is its own little ice age, in which the memories most distant are being ploughed into the dirt to make way for fresh ones. This has to do with changes in parts of the brain's structure. Sigmund Freud offered the first explanation for infantile amnesia: The memories are repressed due to their sexual and traumatic nature.
Though scientists have discounted Freud's year-old idea on the matter, there is still no consensus about the origin of childhood amnesia. But theories abound.
For a time, scientists believed that infants simply didn't have the mental capacity for declarative memories their brains are "immature". But 2- andyear-olds can remember and talk about events that happened months, or even more than a year, before, according to a study published in the journal Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.
But is the under-formed hippocampus losing our long-term memories, or are they never formed in the first place? We should be very wary about what we do recall from that time, though — our childhood is probably full of false memories for events that never occurred. Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, has devoted her career to the phenomenon. Loftus knows first-hand how easily this happens. Her mother drowned in a swimming pool when she was just Years later, a relative convinced her that she had discovered her floating body.
Back in the s, she recruited volunteers for a study and planted the memories herself. Loftus spun an elaborate lie about a traumatic trip to a shopping mall when they got lost, before being rescued by a kindly elderly woman and reunited. To make the event more plausible, she even roped in their families. Even if your memories are based on real events, they have probably been moulded and refashioned in hindsight — memories planted by conversations rather than first-person memories of the actual events.
That time you thought it would be funny to turn your sister into a zebra with permanent marker? You saw it in a family video. The incredible third birthday cake your mother made you? Your older brother told you about it.
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