Chances are you don’t remember much from before you were about three years old, and the way we narrate our worlds to ourselves is a big part of why.
For memories to remain accessible, writes Alasdair Wilkins, our younger selves would have to narrate the world in the same language-based way we do when we’re older: “I formed earlier memories using more rudimentary, pre-verbal means, and that made those memories unreachable as the acquisition of language reshaped how my mind works.”