Infantile Amnesia
The Forgotten Years
Infantile amnesia is the inability of most older children and adults to remember events that occurred before the age of three (Berk 126). There are a few different explanations that are offered as to why we cannot remember events from our infancy. The first explanation has to do with our brain development. The prefrontal cortex is not developed fully when we are infants, and this makes it impossible for infants to remember events fully. Researchers also believe that children remember things deliberately and not implicitly, and that there is not a conscious awareness (Berk 126). Another explanation given is that since infant’s memory processing is mostly nonverbal, it could prevent the long-term retention of early experiences. Infants are incapable of organizing their memories properly. It is also hard to remember events from infancy since there is no sense of self. It makes it difficult for an infant to develop memories of events happening to them when they do not know who they are exactly. Some people believe they can remember things from early infancy because they have been shown pictures or heard stories about certain events and they may feel like they remember an event when they really do not.
Method
To collect the earliest memory data I first sat down and thought for a while about what my earliest memory really is, and then wrote down everything that I remember from that day as precisely as I could. After I wrote down the exact memory I contacted my mother and my brother to see if they could verify my memory for me. Next, I needed to pick two classmates from our online discussion board to use as my participants. I took my time reading the responses from everyone that posted their memory and there ended up being two that stood out to me the most, Alexandra Stewart’s post and Katie Collin’s. I copy and pasted Alexandra’s and Katie’s posts into a separate word document that I could easily access and then I read over their stories a
Infantile amnesia is the inability of most older children and adults to remember events that occurred before the age of three (Berk 126). There are a few different explanations that are offered as to why we cannot remember events from our infancy. The first explanation has to do with our brain development. The prefrontal cortex is not developed fully when we are infants, and this makes it impossible for infants to remember events fully. Researchers also believe that children remember things deliberately and not implicitly, and that there is not a conscious awareness (Berk 126). Another explanation given is that since infant’s memory processing is mostly nonverbal, it could prevent the long-term retention of early experiences. Infants are incapable of organizing their memories properly. It is also hard to remember events from infancy since there is no sense of self. It makes it difficult for an infant to develop memories of events happening to them when they do not know who they are exactly. Some people believe they can remember things from early infancy because they have been shown pictures or heard stories about certain events and they may feel like they remember an event when they really do not.
Method
To collect the earliest memory data I first sat down and thought for a while about what my earliest memory really is, and then wrote down everything that I remember from that day as precisely as I could. After I wrote down the exact memory I contacted my mother and my brother to see if they could verify my memory for me. Next, I needed to pick two classmates from our online discussion board to use as my participants. I took my time reading the responses from everyone that posted their memory and there ended up being two that stood out to me the most, Alexandra Stewart’s post and Katie Collin’s. I copy and pasted Alexandra’s and Katie’s posts into a separate word document that I could easily access and then I read over their stories a