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I'm certainly not claiming that infants have the equivalent of Korsakoff's syndrome. And there certainly has been research that indicates that babies respond d

I'm certainly not claiming that infants have the equivalent of Korsakoff's syndrome. And there certainly has been research that indicates that babies respond differently to the speech rhythms of the language they are exposed to in utero than foreign languages, and that infants are calmed by recordings of the fetal heartbeat/mother's heartbeat combination. In fact, when my eldest daughter was born, I bought a CD ("Music to Be Born By", by Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead) designed for this specific purpose. My point is that there is pretty broad agreement that 2 year olds do not have conscious memories of birth or in utero life, of the nature described by the OP's anecdote. In fact, the sound of the maternal heartbeat was presumably so constant that it is difficult to imagine a fetus forming a conscious memory of it, as it would lack the "novelty" necessary for memory formation.

jacquesm 16y ago
> the sound of the maternal heartbeat was presumably so constant that it is difficult to imagine a fetus forming a conscious memory of it, as it would lack the "novelty" necessary for memory formation. That's a good point, actually. If something is repetitive enough it fades in to the background. I remember working next to an open window in Toronto while there was major construction going on to replace the road right next to the office. The windows were open because we didn't have money for AC and it was right under a roof. The first two days were terrible, after that we stopped hearing the jackhammers. Only when they finished did we notice...
- timinman 16y ago
  You stopped noticing them, but you do all the same have a very vivid memory of their existence.