[wdrw]

There is a surprising amount of detailed childhood memories you may be able to retrieve by making a prolonged, conscious effort. I would guess that many people who say they don't have very many childhood memories have never taken e.g. 30 minutes of concentrated effort to really try to retrieve them. Here's what worked for me: imagine my childhood apartment, and mentally move along it, very very slowly, stopping in every part of every room, mentally examining every piece of furniture, etc. Of course it won't work for everyone, but for me memories associated with specific places just flooded in, I was very surprised at how many there were. I'm sure there are other methods as well. I think basically it involves trying a bunch of different "keys" that may be a match to "values" stored in memory.