Childhood amnesia: what does it consist of?

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Childhood amnesia has to do with having many gaps or even not remembering anything from our first years of life. But why does it happen?

Your earliest memories probably date back to when you were four or five years old. But first, what happened? Why don’t we remember it? This is what the phenomenon we will talk about today is about: infantile amnesia.

What exactly is infantile amnesia? When does it appear? Why don’t we remember the first years of life? In this article we are going to try to answer these and other interesting questions.

Childhood amnesia: what does it consist of?

Infantile amnesia, also called childhood amnesia, is the inability of adults to remember the first years of childhood.

Normally this type of amnesia encompasses events that occur from birth to three or four years of life. Therefore, generally, the first memories we have from when we were little are those from when we were four or five years old.

Characteristics of childhood amnesia

Infantile amnesia is characterized by the relative absence of memory and memories before three or four years of age. It is as if, before those ages, there was a gap in our memory. In reality, this term does not designate the complete absence of memories, but rather the relative scarcity of them during childhood. The time limit covered by infantile amnesia is variable.

According to a study by Wang (2001), this time limit is influenced by two types of variables: personal (individual experiences) and cultural (cultural factors).

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We become aware in adulthood

Thus, children, although they are expert learners and have a great capacity to acquire and retain information, have memories from when they were little that are inaccessible to their memory due to this type of amnesia. However, according to West et al. (1999) and Fivush (1987), we experience this type of amnesia (or become aware of it) when we are already adults.

Investigation

For many years this type of amnesia has been studied in adults, although recently it has also been done with children. According to Usher et al. (1993), in an article published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, When investigating childhood amnesia, easily verifiable events are generally used, in addition to being very intense or prominent.

For example, the birth of a sibling is used. Because? To avoid problems of unreliability of children’s memories.

When does it manifest?

As we said, this type of amnesia has been studied mainly in adults. And it is in adults when it manifests itself, although there is research whose data suggests that infantile amnesia already exists during childhood.

In relation to this, in a series of investigations by Bauer and Larkina (2014), it was determined that infantile amnesia appeared from the age of seven. By this we mean the person’s awareness that the first events in life are not remembered.

In other research it has been observed that young children are capable of having memories, but that these are less clear and detailed than when children grow older. So, when they are older, Children are able to remember much longer events and in more detail, despite not remembering the first years of his life.

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Why don’t we remember the first years of life?

There are different hypotheses about why we do not remember the first years of life, although there is no total consensus regarding its explanation. We leave you three of the most accepted:

Linguistic hypothesis

According to the linguistic hypothesis, for example, childhood amnesia would appear due to a lack of adequate encoding, due to the absence or lack of language development. According to this hypothesis, Language would constitute the structure to organize everything we live. If language is missing, this organization is more difficult and therefore the experiences are more difficult to remember.

Neurological hypothesis

The neurological hypothesis suggests that infantile amnesia could be due to brain immaturity, on the one hand, and neuronal overpopulation during the first years of life, on the other. Thus, in childhood, our hippocampus (closely linked to memory) undergoes a process of constant neurogenesis.

This creation of new neurons would make it difficult to record information in a persistent and stable way, which would cause us to lose part of the autobiographical memories of childhood.

Hypotheses about the formation of I

Another hypothesis suggests that infantile amnesia is due to the fact that, when we are young, we do not yet have an “I”, a well-defined self-concept. Thus, by not being aware that we exist, or that “we are” (that is, of an identity), we cannot create a biography through that I.

Final reflection

Surely, the explanation of why we do not remember the first years of our lives has to do with all the hypotheses mentioned (and with new ones that will emerge). The truth is that the brain remains a great unknown in many aspects, which includes memory or autobiographical memory.

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Maybe those first childhood memories were not recordeds in our memory, or perhaps “there” they are, although we do not have access to them. Surely, neuroscience will give us more exact answers to all of this in the future. In the meantime, let’s continue creating memories.