Is extremely early memory associated with Autism?

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By whatever I meant "so many folks testify to this so it has to be taken seriously", but still- its at odds with my understanding of how the world works. So a thousand mae culpas for all of the folks took as a put down. Didnt mean it that way.

It is very exasperating when you know you have experienced this and people who haven't are dismissive. Plenty of people in this thread are validating your experiences BIF, they are early recallers too.

Natural Plastic, I'm glad you added your clarification.

Early recall is taken seriously by researchers, and by the people who do experience it. And hopefully people who don't have that faculty themselves can understand it a bit more now.

At odds with your understanding of how the world works? Or at odds with your personal experience?

I have always tended to assume that everyone else thinks pretty much like me and been surprised to find how much they don't. This came out when the topic of "first memories" came up in high school. Some people said three, like you, some people said 6 or even 7!! ! I said 9 months and explained why I had that date in mind. I wondered if the people who were claiming no memories before a much older age like 6 were being deceptive or trying to avoid thinking about something traumatic.

I can remember so many long sequences of events from my first second and third years of life that just not having access to that is really hard for me to imagine.

Is that what you mean by your understanding of how the world works, or are you thking of something more specific like a neurological issue? Something like: the hippocampus is still developing until age 3, so the process of converting working memory to long term semantic or episodic memory is impaired or unstable...

I just made that up, but based on my basic understanding of the neurobiology of memory, something along those lines would be plausible. Even if there were such an explanation for the loss of early memory, you would have to allow for variability in developmental pathways that could result in the early memories that many of us report.

Yes.

Aspie thing or not I too, do have extremely early memories (including a snapshot from pram like OP!) and many of them are related to real items and events, proven to be, not mind constructs or re-told stories.

Snapshots from the bedroom as it was when I was some months old baby, views from nearby fields that soon ceased to exist etc etc. Items like a bed, a tree, a gate and another gate, the dinner table, the well, the pond, the height of kitchen window and the height of the stove ... oh, many many items! Even an electric voltage converter! The same items in my memory pictures and movies are different sizes as if they were shrinking over time

… average hip-height ferns in our garden where once a magical forest full of bright green spring light … and freaky 'big' snails …

Ah, ok, let's be more concise.

For example, I tell you one of the longest one (because it goes with a mini drama it is still very clear and fresh, as if it had happened yesterday, literally. It ranks among clearest ones too).

There was a small apple tree in our garden with it's trunk being split into two only about maybe three inches from the ground.

I clearly remember trying to climb that tree, putting lifting my foot as high, as hi-iiiigh as I could - the split seemed so high … and somehow getting the foot into the split … "Yes, I can get up there!" I thought, pulled myself forwards and upwards towards the tree ... and then got stuck in it!! ! The horror!

With some crying and pulling I somehow managed to get my foot out of the red wellington boot that I had been wearing and started screaming of fear (of the possibility getting stuck there forever), disappointment (of not being able to climb) and relief (of having got the foot out).

Now an middle-aged adult, a few years ago I told about the incident to my mother because I remember turning around and seeing her running to me. She thought about it for a while, then finally thought she had remembered the event and claimed I had barely learned to walk at that time, I had been about a year old - how could I have remembered?!

She had forgotten it, there was no re-telling going on. All she could remember was hearing me screaming and - when she run back (she had went to pick something up) - sitting on ground and having my wellington in the tree trunk. She said she didn't really realize I had thought to climb the tree! A toddling toddler?! I wasn't able to explain at that age either...

Because I remember the split as very high despite it being really close to the ground it shows I must have been really small. I remember the tree being big.

Because I was wearing wellingtons it must have been early autumn (I'm from North, it's too cold for wellies from October onwards) and I'm born in August.

Adding on my mothers' claim I was one year old or so, the memory is from between age 12 months to 14 months.

I did climb that tree later - carefully not to get stuck again. I remember the lowest branch being so high too … I couldn't reach it. There was no way... And then I remember the joy when I finally could! And then the joy when I finally could not just reach it but also to pull myself on it … Wow!

… and then I remember my disappointment when it wasn't an effort to get to that branch any longer … when I could get to all the other branches with ease…

And the disappointment when I realized it was really a small tree, not some big achievement - the lowest branch is about my waist height in my adult reality. Even though the tree must have grown too, the human baby has been much faster!

So.

It is a real pity some people dismiss early recalling as nonsense or delusion and I hope researches one day will find an explanation why some people have memory-snapshots from cot and pram and some only from primary school age.

For now, early recalling is just a fact of life. And it's a beautiful one !

I remember very early. My earliest memory is of an event that happened when I was less than a year old. The family cat jumped into my crib and poked at me with her paws, hurting me. She was kneading the blanket the way cats do when they want to sit down, but I didn't know that at the time, of course. I could feel her claws and it hurt. I was terrified and screamed my head off; my first meltdown. I remember the cat (in my memory, it was HUGE; just as it would have been for my size at the time). I remember the blanket (it was yellow). I remember the pain of her claws, and the pressure of her paws pushing on me, which also hurt. I remember the dark room and that the darkness was blue.
No one could have told me about the event because no one else was involved. No one knew it happened. The cat jumped out and ran away before my mom came in to see what I was crying about. The crib wasn't in my parents' bedroom. I know I was less than one because my parents told me that I only slept in a crib for the first few months.

I remember playing with some kittens in the yard when I was 2 and the mother cat chased me into the house and I ran behind the sofa to hide. That cat was huge!

I think they already found a good explanation.
Early memories are easily degraded by synaptic pruning, causing infantile amnesia in most people.
Early memories are a gift. they are a part of me and I can't imagine not remembering that part of my life.

I usually think of my first memory as being at the hospital when my brother was born when I was 4. But I have a few hazy memories from earlier on that I can't distinguish from stories I was told later. I remember being at a beach somewhere and having my diaper changed (so I must have been 1 or 2) and hearing one of my parents mention Myrtle Beach. So for a long time after that I thought I'd been to Myrtle Beach, even though I hadn't.