ChaPteR 8 Memory 297that they remember past experiences (for exam-
ple, by imitating something they saw earlier);
and some 4-year-olds can remember experiences
that occurred before age 2 1/2 (Bauer, 2002;
McDonough & Mandler, 1994; Tustin & Hayne,
2010). What young children do not do well is
encode and retain their early episodic memories—
memories of particular events—and carry them
into later childhood or adulthood.
Freud thought that childhood amnesia was a
special case of repression, but memory researchers
today think that repression has nothing to do with
it, and they point to better explanations:1
Brain development. Parts of the brain involved
in the formation or storage of events, espe-
cially the prefrontal cortex, are not well developed
until a few years after birth (McKee & Squire,
1993; Newcombe, Lloyd, & Balcomb, 2012). In
addition, the brains of infants and toddlers are
busily attending to all the new experiences of life,
but this very fact makes it difficult for them to
focus on just one event and shut out everything
else that’s going on—the kind of focus necessary
for encoding and remembering (Gopnik, 2009).2
Cognitive development. Before you can carry
memories about yourself with you into adult-
hood, you have to have a self to remember. Theabout the time... ?”) and to connect with oth-
ers (“Remember that time we... ?”). We analyze
them to learn more about who we are. We modify
and embellish them to impress others, and some
people even publish them.
Childhood Amnesia: The Missing
Years LO 8.20
A curious aspect of autobiographical memory is
that most adults cannot recall any events from
earlier than age 2, and even after that, memories
are sketchy at best until about age 6 (Hayne &
Jack, 2011). A few people apparently can vaguely
recall significant events that occurred when they
were as young as 2 years old, such as the birth of
a sibling, but not earlier ones (Fivush & Nelson,
2004; Usher & Neisser, 1993). As adults, we can-
not remember being fed in infancy, taking our
first steps, or uttering our first halting sentences.
We are victims of childhood amnesia (sometimes
called infantile amnesia).
Childhood amnesia is disturbing to many
people, so disturbing that some people ada-
mantly deny that it exists, claiming to remember
events from the second or even the first year
of life. But like other false memories, these
are reconstructions based on photographs, fam-
ily stories, and imagination. The “remembered”
event may not even
have taken place.
Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget (1952)
once reported a
memory of nearly
being kidnapped at
the age of 2. Piaget
remembered sitting in his pram, watching his
nurse as she bravely defended him from the
kidnapper. He remembered the scratches she
received on her face. He remembered a police
officer with a short cloak and white baton who
finally chased the kidnapper away. But when
Piaget was 15, his nurse wrote to his parents
confessing that she had made up the entire story.
Piaget noted, “I therefore must have heard, as a
child, the account of this story... and projected
it into the past in the form of a visual memory,
which was a memory of a memory, but false.”
Of course, we all retain procedural memories
from the toddler stage, when we first learned to
use a fork, drink from a cup, and pull a wagon.
We also retain semantic memories acquired early
in life: the rules of counting, the names of people
and things, knowledge about objects in the world,
words and meanings. Moreover, toddlers who
are only 1 to 2 years old often reveal nonverbally
childhood (infantile)
amnesia The inability
to remember events and
experiences that occurred
earlier than age 2.This infant, whose leg is attached by a string to a color-
ful mobile, will learn within minutes to make the mobile
move by kicking it. She may still remember the trick a
week later, an example of procedural memory (Rovee-
Collier, 1993). However, when she is older, she will not
remember the experience itself. She will fall victim to
childhood amnesia.About “Memories” from
InfancyThinking
CriTiCally