In psychology, childhood amnesia refers to the inability of people to remember their earliest childhood experiences. Childhood amnesia has been recognized for centuries, but the nature and cause of the phenomenon have been debated in psychology since the late 19th century. Sigmund Freud theorized that childhood amnesia occurs when a young mind blocks out unsuitable impressions or emotional trauma, which he considered a universal human experience. Few scientists who study human development consider that explanation plausible, but childhood amnesia remains somewhat of a paradox: infants' and young children's minds handle a lot of new impressions and are adept at learning, and yet it seems that long-term memories are only created after some fundamental developments of the brain are completed. Jump to: navigation, search Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior and its relationship to the mind and brain. ... Jump to: navigation, search Memory is a function of the brain: the ability to retain information. ... A male Caucasian toddler child A child (plural: children) is a young human. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939; ) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, based on his theory that unconscious motives control much behavior, that particular kinds of unconscious thoughts and memories, especially sexual and aggressive ones... Human development is the physical and mental process of growing from a one-celled zygote to an adult human being. ...

Characterisation

Childhood amnesia was first studied at the end of the 19th century by Freud, G. Stanley Hall and others. Since then it has been established that humans, regardless of age, cannot recall their earliest childhood. Many studies have been conducted to measure the cut-off age. Individually, peoples' earliest memories may be between two years to seven years of age, with the mean value around 3.5 years of age¹. It has been shown that females' first memories are generally a little bit earlier than that of males. Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1844 in Ashfield, Massachusetts - April 24, 1924) was a psychologist and educationalist who pioneered American psychology. ...

Defining and probing for the earliest memories is problematic. Often, subjects have heard stories about their childhood that mix with their real memories and make it difficult to differentiate what was actually remembered. Also, often a subject's earliest claimed memory is not confirmable; for this reason, memories like the birth of a younger sibling have been used in experiments when probing for the earliest possible memories.

There is a distinction between "sporadic memories" and "autobiographic memories", the latter being those that are part of the personal "narrative" of life. Also, an event that is often remembered may be rehearsed by the parents and those close to the child, so memories before or after that time may be remembered or forgotten.

Mind development

Usually between the ages of two and three years, the brain of a child changes from tactile and olfactory processing of memories to verbal processing. Childhood amnesia is therefore theorised to be closely connected with the development of language and the creation of a self-image. This research has become increasingly of interest to those researching cognition and language learning. Tactition is the sense of pressure perception. ... Olfaction, the sense of smell, is the detection of chemicals dissolved in air (or, by animals that breathe water, in water). ... Broadly conceived, linguistics is the study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Jump to: navigation, search Look up Cognition on Wiktionary, the free dictionary The term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. ...

Emotional Memory

Our most vivid memories are associated with intense emotions, and the emotional changes associated with that experience. Since very early childhood is usually marked by a relatively limited emotional movement, and that the emotions occur at a relatively slow rate of change, some believe that this lack of emotional range is responsible for a lack of most childhood memories, with trauma being responsible for other childhood amnesia events.

Trauma

Many have questioned the veracity of psychoanalytic theories surrounding childhood amnesia, including Freud's theory centering on repressed memories of sexual abuse or other trauma. Freud theorized that such trauma would delay the cut-off for recalling, or cause memory gaps. Even though Freud's theory has not been confirmed, it has been reported that children subject to trauma during early childhood report fewer memories from their earliest years¹ Psychoanalysis is the revelation of unconscious relations, in a systematic way through an associative process. ... Abuse is a general term for the misuse of a person or thing, causing harm to the person or thing, to the abuser, or to someone else. ... Trauma can represent: A serious and often body-altering physical injury, such as the removal of a limb. ...

A neurocognitive hypothesis about childhood amnesia

Douglas Hofstadter states in an essay entitled Analogy as the Core of Cognition that infants before the ages of two or three do not form memories of the same type as we retrieve/reconstruct as older children and adults because most of their experiences cannot be comprehended and codified the way we "grasp" and make sense of our experiences. "...it has to do with the relentless, lifelong process of chunking-- taking "small" concepts and putting them together into bigger and bigger ones, thus recursively building up a giant repertoire of concepts in the mind." The hypothesis is elaborated in Gentner D, Holyoak K, Kokanov B, eds. The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

See also

• Amnesia
• Developmental psychology

Amnesia (or amnaesia in Commonwealth English) is a condition in which memory is disturbed. ... Jump to: navigation, search A baby thinking Developmental psychology is the scientific study of behavioral changes that occur in infants and children as they age. ...

References

1. Joseph, Emotional Trauma and Childhood Amnesia, 2003
2. Cox News Service, 'Childhood amnesia' theories disputed, 2004
3. Eacott & Crawley, On answering questions about very early life events (PDF), 1999