What is your earliest memory? For me, I have a hazy recollection of standing in a leafy garden surrounded by silver birch trees when I was four years old.
你最早的记忆是什么呢？对于我来说，最早的记忆是我四岁时，坐在白桦树环绕的一个郁郁葱葱的花园里时的模糊记忆。
I'm around average: some people remember events as far back as two years old, while for others, things seem patchy until seven or eight.
我大概处于平均状态：一些人可以记得两岁时的一些事情，而有些人只能记得7到8岁时零零碎碎的画面。
But what is consistent is that no one can remember their own birth or very early infancy.And even after the first memory, most of us only have a sporadic collection of fleeting,flickering mental images until much later in childhood.
但是，可以肯定的是没人能记得他们自己出生时的情况或者婴儿期的事情。甚至最早的记忆之后，我们大部分人只有稍纵即逝，闪烁的心理图像的零星收集，直到我们的孩童时代后期。
The phenomenon is known as 'childhood amnesia', a term coined by the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. So, what's going on here?
这种现象被称为“儿童期健忘症”，这个术语是由精神分析学之父弗洛伊德提出的，那么，发生了什么呢？
Babies are, writes Zaria Gorvett for BBC Future, "sponges for new information, forming 700 new neural connections every second and wielding language-learning skills to make the most accomplished polyglot green with envy".
BBC未来栏目的扎利亚写过，婴儿时期需要海绵般吸收大量新信息，每秒钟形成700种新的神经联结，运用语言学习技能来成为一个令人羡慕的有才华的通晓多国语言的能人。
And it's precisely this rapid mental development that causes the problem, according to a study by the University of Toronto in 2014. It found that the high rate of infant brain cell production could increase forgetfulness,because new cells interfere with existing mental circuits.
根据2014年多伦多大学的一项研究发现，正是这种快速发展导致了这个问题的发生。婴儿期脑细胞的快速生产，会增加健忘程度，因为新的细胞会干扰现有的心理回路。
Another possible explanation is that the part of the brain that stores memories, the hippocampus, is not fully formed until around 18 months. Identity is also important: tests show infants don't recognise themselves in the mirror until they are around two years old.
另一个可能的解释是存储记忆的大脑一部分，海马，直到18个月才完全形成。身份也很重要：测试表明，婴儿不认识镜子中的自己，直到2岁左右才认识。
Finally, there's the question of how accurate our early memories are at all. "People can pick up suggestions and begin to visualise them - they become like memories," psychologist Elizabeth Loftus told the BBC. Are our cherished first memories really just family stories?
最后一个问题，我们早期的记忆是多么准确，“人们可以选择建议并开始想象他们，他们变得就像是记忆，”心理学家伊丽莎白洛夫告诉BBC，我们珍爱的最初的记忆真的仅仅是家庭故事吗？
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