Memento
What do children remember, and what do they forget?
by Heather Turgeon
January 12, 2009
A baby's hippocampus does work to some degree — allowing her to recognize faces, for example (which H.M. was unable to do), but this brain region is immature, and it gradually becomes faster and more connected during the first few years of life. As it does, conscious memories are able to hang around for longer and longer periods, giving toddlers impressive recall for single events that happened months before. But, as most of us know, the earliest permanent memories we have are of age three or four.
Freud, who coined the term "infantile amnesia," explained this by saying that we repress these early memories into our unconscious, where they continue to lurk even through adulthood. But researchers now know that memories never get stored in the first place until regions like the hippocampus develop. "The recording apparatus just isn't up to speed to store things in a permanent way," says Eliot. Even though the amount of time a child can remember things continues to increase as the hippocampus matures (allowing Will to make his dessert recommendation after eight months), it isn't until preschool and beyond that memories have a chance of becoming permanent. Even then, memories aren't likely to stick unless they are repeated or have a big emotional impact.
The fact that we don't remember our first three years, Eliot explains, has to do with more than just immature brains. A lot of memories depend on cues from our environment. We see, hear, or smell certain things and a memory is triggered. Some psychologists believe that this is part of the reason for childhood amnesia — our environment changes so much that we don't get the same cues that we did when we were little. "You're never that small again," Eliot says. "You never have that perspective on the room and other people, so there is no stimulus to evoke recall. There are no crib bars to be looking out."
Once a child starts to talk, in the middle of the second year, long-term memory gets a big boost. Language comes around the time kids develop self-awareness and start to understand how events fit together. "When you're little, you don't have that cognitive framework," says Eliot. "Experiences happen, but there's nowhere to slot them, so they're less likely to be rehearsed."
The way parents reminisce affects their kid's memory.
In the preschool years, children start to be able to put together narratives — thinking about the world in terms of who, what, when, where, and how all these things fit together, which bodes well for memory's staying power.
Researchers have found, in fact, that the way parents reminisce affects their kid's memory. A child's memory will be stronger if mom helps her put together a story and make connections between things (for example, "Remember what we saw at the park last week? Yes, a dog! And what was the dog doing? He barked loud and you started to laugh!"). As opposed to asking repetitive questions that don't involve much detail ("What did we see? Yes, a dog! And what else did we see?"). When parents flesh out a story, rather than just go after simple facts, memories can find their home in a child's mind.
H.M. never recognized the researchers who studied him for over five decades, but he did learn new skills and associations. We now know that this is because memory doesn't have just one address in the brain. The way we remember how to ride a bike is separate from the way we remember the day our parents took off the training wheels. Without a mature hippocampus, babies and toddlers are mainly creatures of short-term memory. But the unconscious memories that they form right from the start may be the most important ones. These are the emotional patterns that we learn — that we are safe, that when mom picks us up we feel happy, or that when we knock over a tower of blocks and turn to look at dad, he will be smiling back at us. This is why many people say that the first few years of life are the most important — because way in the back of our brains is where we learn (unconsciously) that the world is a good place.
©2009 Heather Turgeon and Babble Media
About the Author
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Heather Turgeon is a psychotherapist who works with individuals and couples and runs Mommy and Me classes at the Pump Station in Los Angeles. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband and toddler. |
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