Piaget's Memory

Piaget (1951) in his book Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood, provides a provocative example of what seems to be a reconstructed memory based on postevent suggestion. Piaget had a memory for being kidnapped at age 2 which he maintained until he learned that it was false when he was fifteen. It turned out that Piaget's nanny had concocted the whole story of the kidnapping in order to get a reward. What's striking about Piaget's memory is the vividness of it. The memory contained vivid visual imagery. Piaget writes,

"I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I believed until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station. [p. 188]"

Piaget himself accounted for this as a reconstruction and added, "Many real memories are doubtless of the same order."