Neuroscience
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly talk about events from over a year ago, suggesting these earlier events were once encoded in verbally-accessible long-term memory.
Carole Peterson and colleagues at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada wondered at what age these earlier memories become inaccessible. Perhaps younger children have access to earlier memories than teenagers and adults do. So they asked 128 children and teenagers aged from six to nineteen about their earliest memory.
They found children aged six to nine years had earlier first memories (from when they were about three) than the older children and teenagers, but that beyond age 10 there was no difference: a typical 10-year-old’s first memory was no earlier than a typical 19-year-old’s, usually being from when they were around three and half to four years old. So what happens to these earlier memories when children reach the age of ten? Peterson and colleagues don’t have the answer: “…this report adds to the paradox”, they said “…children are able to verbally retrieve memories from a period of their lives to which they later have little or no verbal access”.
Another finding that surprised the researchers was that the content of the children’s earliest memories was similar regardless of their current age – usually a snapshot of an individual experience, rather than a more detailed story. Children from more collectivist cultures would probably recount more group-based early memories, they said.
They also found, contrary to earlier research, that most of the children’s earliest memories were emotionally neutral. However, girls were more likely than boys to recall an emotional memory, the latter tending to recall events surrounding play.
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Peterson, C., Grant, V.V. & Boland, L.D. (2005). Childhood amnesia in children and adolescents: Their earliest memories. Memory, 13, 622-637.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Where did all the memories go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly talk about events from over a year ago, suggesting these earlier events were once encoded in verbally-accessible long-term memory.Carole Peterson and colleagues at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada wondered at what age these earlier memories become inaccessible. Perhaps younger children have access to earlier memories than teenagers and adults do. So they asked 128 children and teenagers aged from six to nineteen about their earliest memory.
They found children aged six to nine years had earlier first memories (from when they were about three) than the older children and teenagers, but that beyond age 10 there was no difference: a typical 10-year-old’s first memory was no earlier than a typical 19-year-old’s, usually being from when they were around three and half to four years old. So what happens to these earlier memories when children reach the age of ten? Peterson and colleagues don’t have the answer: “…this report adds to the paradox”, they said “…children are able to verbally retrieve memories from a period of their lives to which they later have little or no verbal access”.
Another finding that surprised the researchers was that the content of the children’s earliest memories was similar regardless of their current age – usually a snapshot of an individual experience, rather than a more detailed story. Children from more collectivist cultures would probably recount more group-based early memories, they said.
They also found, contrary to earlier research, that most of the children’s earliest memories were emotionally neutral. However, girls were more likely than boys to recall an emotional memory, the latter tending to recall events surrounding play.
___________________________________
Peterson, C., Grant, V.V. & Boland, L.D. (2005). Childhood amnesia in children and adolescents: Their earliest memories. Memory, 13, 622-637.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- The Amazing Durability Of Infant Memory: Three-year-olds Show Recognition Of A Person They Met Once At Age One
The fate of our earliest memories is something of an enigma. As adults, most of us are unable to recall memories from before we were age three or four. And yet, as toddlers we are perfectly capable of storing and recalling memories from before that age....
- Childhood Amnesia Kicks In Around Age 7
You could travel the world with an infant aged under 3 and it's almost guaranteed that when they get older they won't remember a single boat trip, plane ride or sunset. This is thanks to a phenomenon, known as childhood or infantile amnesia, that...
- Negative False Memories Are More Easily Implanted In Children's Minds Than Neutral Ones
Children develop false memories for a negative event more readily than they do for a neutral one. Henry Otgaar and colleagues, who made the new finding, said their work has real world implications for anyone working with child witnesses: "The argument...
- Women's Memories Are More Speech-filled Than Men's
To gasps of surprise from some quarters, a spate of recent studies have shown that women don't talk any more than men do. But now Richard Ely and Elizabeth Ryan have looked at people's autobiographical memories and found that while women may not...
- Fresh Doubt Cast On Memories Of Abuse Recovered In Therapy
Memories of child abuse, long buried, but suddenly recovered in therapy, have been a source of controversy for some time now. The fear is that such memories are false; that they are the product of suggestion, hypnosis, visualisation or other therapeutic...