Childhood Amnesia and the Beginnings of Memory for Four Early Life Events

When we ask people to recall experiences, they rarely report memories dating from much before about three years of age. For the purpose of this assessment I have chosen the ‘Childhood Amnesia and the Beginnings of Memory for Four Early Life Events’ conducted by JoNell A. Usher and Ulric Neisser, published in 1993 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Therefore, in the following paragraphs I will outline the aim of the study, the methodology and the overall findings.

The current research indicates that most of the early memories are of distressing experiences. It is predicted that under certain conditions, children are able to recall painful and potentially harrowing medical experiences, such as shots (Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms, & Aman, 1990). The aim of this study was to highlight the offset of childhood amnesia (the earliest age of recall) correlated to four different cues (hospitalization, family move, death of a family member and birth of a younger sibling). The research question seems to be very interesting and stimulating because of the connection between the targeted events and participants years of age. Previous researches suggested that infants cannot remember events which took place earlier in their life because of the underdeveloped hippocampus (Nadel and Zola-Morgan, 1984). And therefore, one could argue that childhood amnesia can be explained in relation to the incapacity of the hippocampus to deal with episodic memory. On the other hand, Schachtel (1947) asserted that peculiar events can be recalled into adulthood but it depends on their effect upon the infant. In other words, memorable events are more likely to be remembered into adulthood than conventional ones.

Participants were recruited from the stud...

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...efore, it seems that peculiar memories are available from an earlier age in childhood than previous research has suggested.

Works Cited

Goodman, G. S., Rudy, L., Bottoms, B. L., & Aman, C. (1990). Children’s concerns and memory: Issues of ecological validity in the study of children’s eyewitness testimony. In R. Fivush & J. A.Hudson (Eds.), Knowing and remembering in young children (pp. 249-284). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press

Nadel, L., & Zola-Morgan, S. (1984). Infantile amnesia: A neuro-biological perspective. In M. Moscovitch (Ed.), Infant memory (pp. 145-172). New York: Plenum Press

Schachtel, E. G. (1947). On memory and childhood amnesia. Psychiatry, 10, 1-26.

Usher, J. A., & Neisser, U. (1993). Childhood amnesia and the beginnings of memory for four early life events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 155-165.