At what age children begin to remember events. Why don't we remember ourselves in infancy? Stories lead to memories
It turns out that this is completely normal. More recently, scientists have been able to find the biological mechanisms for this forgetting, which in scientific circles is called "childhood amnesia." Although children use their memory to gain new information, few adults can remember events in their lives that happened before they turned three.
Emory University was able to show that at the age of seven, these early memories are erased from memory. This phenomenon is called childhood amnesia. Magazine Memory published a study in which scientists talked with children from the age of three about past events in their lives. Various subgroups from this group of children were then tested for the ability to replay these memories at the age of five, six, seven, eight and nine years old.
“Our work is the first experimental demonstration of the onset of childhood amnesia,” says Patricia Bauer, psychologist and head of the study. “We recorded the memories of the children and then followed them into their future to find the moment when they would forget it all.” This work aims to study how autobiographical memory changes during childhood and adolescence. “Understanding how autobiographical memory develops is incredibly important for a person to understand themselves and their psyche,” notes Bauer. "How you remember yourself in the past is how you understand who you are today."
Scientists have long known from conversations with adults that the earliest memories begin around the age of three. Sigmund Freud coined the term childhood amnesia to describe this loss of childhood memories. However, in last years the findings suggest that although children use memory to learn language and explore the world around them, they still lack the complete neural tissue architecture needed to form more complex forms of memory. Rather than relying on interviews with adults, as had been done in previous studies of childhood amnesia, the researchers at Emory University wanted to study the formation of early autobiographical memory, as well as understand at what age all of this is forgotten.
The experiment began by recording conversations with 83 children at the age of three, during which their mothers or fathers asked them about six events that happened in the lives of these children over the course of several last months such as going to the zoo or a birthday party. “We asked parents to talk to their children the way they usually do,” says Bauer. She gives an example: “Mom may ask:“ Do you remember when we went to a cafe for your birthday? ”. She will add, "You ate pizza, right?" The child may start remembering details about the trip to the cafe or change the topic of conversation by saying something like: "Zoo!" ".
After recording these basic memories, the scientists spoke to the children a few years later and asked them to recall the events they discussed at the age of three. While children 5-7 years old could remember from 63 to 72% of events, those children who were 8-9 years old recalled only about 35%. “One of the unexpected results was that although 5- and 6-year-olds remembered a larger percentage of the events, their stories about them were less complete,” says Bauer. "Older children recalled fewer events, but in much more detail."
The reason for this phenomenon may be that memories that are stored longer have more details associated with them, and more advanced language skills give the older child the opportunity to better develop their memory and anchoring the memories.
“Children forget events more quickly than adults because they have not yet fully developed the neurological processes necessary to piece together all the pieces of information that together make up autobiographical memory,” explains Bauer. She uses the pasta analogy to explain the difference between a child's and an adult's memory. Memories are like orzo pasta, she says, referring to pasta the size of rice grains, “little pieces to remember.”
Brain little child looks like a colander with big holes trying to preserve those little bits of memory. “Adults do not use a colander, but a small net to preserve memories,” adds Bauer. Now Bauer wants to take a close look at the age at which a person acquires the adult memory system, she believes that this happens somewhere between 9 years and entering college. She adds: “We want to know more about the period when the 'colander' changes to 'small net'. Between the ages of 9 and 18 there is a huge "uninhabited island" for our knowledge of how memory is formed. "
What was your first childhood memory? I remember that during lunch in kindergarten, they brought us six apples for dessert - one for each child who sat at the table. But I wanted the sweetest apple, so, without hesitation, I took a bite of them all - and chose the most delicious.
I was about three years old. Only 5% of people remember themselves before this age. And our memories up to 6-7 years old can usually be counted on one hand. Psychologists call this phenomenon "infantile amnesia."
Like many discoveries in psychology, it belongs to the controversial psychologist Sigmund Freud. Talking with his patients, he noticed that most of them cannot remember themselves at a young age, while if you ask about the period after six years, the number of memories increases dramatically.
Why do we remember childhood so badly?
Until scientists and psychologists have come to a single version, there are several theories about what causes infantile amnesia.
Some scientists believe that a child cannot retain memories, because he has not yet become an independent person, has not separated himself from the environment, and does not know what from the experience is his experience. Psychologist Hark Hawn conducted an experiment: he asked children to hide a toy animal in his laboratory. Two weeks later, he asked the kids where they put the toy. Only those children who already recognized themselves in the mirror (this simple psychological test helps to determine whether the child's “I” has developed) told the scientist where the animal lies. The rest did not remember where they put the toy.
Researchers Gabrielle Simcock and Harlene Hein published a study in Psychological Science in 2002 that found that children's memories of events are closely related to language skills. Since young children do not have enough language skills, they cannot “encode” what is happening in their life into memories.
How, then, do children not forget who their parents are, what is their name, where is their home?
A special type of memory is responsible for the safety of this information - semantic memory. It is a type of long-term storage memory general concepts about the world, there are also stored rules and guidelines, information about the people around, and the knowledge that a chocolate bar is on the top shelf, and for a birthday the parents promised to buy a constructor.
“The problem is not that children cannot form memories, but that they form them in the short-term memory zone,” says scientist Paul Frankland of Toronto. - When I was doing research on the phenomenon of childhood amnesia, I constantly turned to my four-year-old daughter for help. I asked her questions about the places where we were two or three months ago, and she told what she remembers, and in some detail. But I know that in four years she will not remember it. "
Canadian researchers confirm that young children remember their early childhood better than adults. They asked 140 children between the ages of 3 and 13 to describe three of their earliest memories, and two years later they repeated the survey. Of the 50 youngest participants in the study, who at the time of the first contact with scientists were from 4 to 6 (and, accordingly, 6-8 at the time of the second survey), only five children named the same memories as the earliest. Most toddlers have forgotten what they have said about themselves before. Whereas, of the older children, more than 30% have reproduced the same memorable moments as two years earlier.
Frankland's research focused on how the hippocampus works, a part of the brain's limbic system that acts as a "transport company" for transporting and archiving our memories.
We are all born with an underdeveloped hippocampus - it takes several years to get ready for work. And while this area of the brain is "under development", our memories are stored in episodic memory, "stores" of which are scattered across the entire surface of the cortex, in other words, the cerebral cortex. Auditory memories are deposited on the lateral surfaces of the cortex, while visual memories are deposited on the posterior surface. Patricia Bayer from the University of Atlanta advises to imagine these areas as flowers - then it turns out that our whole brain is a large meadow of flowers. And the hippocampus is needed to collect a bouquet of flowers.
Frankland explains: the hippocampus, starting to work at full strength, is too busy transporting and archiving the child's current life, he has no time to be distracted and do business for a long time days gone by... Just as an accountant will not check five-year-old data at the time of the annual report, the hippocampus does not spend energy laying paths-connections to our earliest childhood memories, focusing on remembering as much of our life today as possible.
Canadian scientist proved his theory on rats. He took several mice, which normally have the same long-term memory problems as children, and with the help of drugs slowed down the formation of new neural connections in the hippocampus. Mice, who had previously forgotten the correct "path" in the labyrinth to cheese for several days, were able to preserve this memory for a long time and successfully found a treat weeks later. Freed from current tasks, their hippocampus found the resources to move the memory of the correct road to cheese from short-term memory to long-term memory. Soon, the scientist plans to test his theory on children with cancer - one of the effects of the drugs they are prescribed is to slow down the formation of neural connections in the hippocampus.
Freud believed that the phenomenon of childhood amnesia is associated with the need to erase the traumatic events of childhood from memory. Modern scientists still don't know why early memories don't find their place in our storage of memory, but they figured out when they start to fade.
A recent study by Patricia Bayer and Marina Larkina showed that the phenomenon of childhood amnesia “activates” at the age of 7 years. They recorded the conversation of mothers with three-year-old children about the last six bright events in the child's life - visiting the zoo, the first day in kindergarten, and so on. After a while, the researchers contacted the families again and asked the children what they remembered about the six events. Since the aim of the study was to establish at what age we forget our childhood, the scientists talked to different children from the test group at different ages - with some at five years old, with others at six, seven, eight, nine. Thus, they were able to record how much information at what age children can reproduce.
It turned out that the guys who at the time of the survey were 5-7 years old remembered 60% of what happened to them at the age of three. Whereas those with whom they spoke at the age of 8-9 could reproduce no more than 40%.
As another group of Canadian scientists, led by Dr. Petersen, found out, the formation of childhood memories is also influenced by the environment in which the child grows. In 2009, he conducted a large-scale experiment in which 225 Canadian children and 113 children from China, aged 8, 11 and 14, participated. They were asked to write as many memories of their childhood as possible in four minutes. Children from Canada were able to remember twice as much of what happened to them in childhood as Chinese children, while they remembered themselves, on average, six months younger. Interestingly, most of their memories were related to their own experiences, while children from China recalled more those related to family and group activities.
This study showed that how well we remember childhood (and what we remember) is influenced by our environment. In general, our early childhood memories are usually more visual than auditory, and more often positive than negative.
To help the child retain the memory, it is necessary to discuss the incident with as many details as possible. Do not tell the child the facts, for the formation of memories it is much more effective to nudge the child to talk about what happened. Do you remember how we went to the zoo? What did you see there? What color was the lion's fur? What sounds did the gorilla make?
It may be that when he grows up, your child will not remember how he fed the fish in the Maldives at the age of three, but regular discussion of your adventures together enriches vocabulary toddler, builds self-confidence, teaches to cooperate and brings you closer.
Photo - photobank Lori
We still know very little about memory and early brain development, but recent research has led to a number of new discoveries. So, in infants, the so-called declarative, explicit (long-term) memory was discovered - memorizing the mother's voice. The little ones reacted with emotion. As soon as my mother spoke up, they began to smile and calm down. It is not known when the fetus begins to distinguish the mother's voice in the uterus, but this is the very first place where his memory begins to absorb information. These difficult nine months of carrying and nursing your baby are actually your first chance to start talking to them. Dr. Spencer also explains the difference between semantic and declarative memory. Babies who cry for their mother to feed them use semantic, unconscious memory to help them survive. Declarative memory is conscious, based on observation and knowledge.
Photo Getty Images
About three to seven years
Early development of memory and brain is very important before the age of five. The brain at this age is so flexible that this is the best time to learn, since it can remember almost everything. The more you chant, the more your children chant. Dr. Spencer recommends a repetition and regimen for children ages 3 to 7. This allows them to categorize things and translate them into long-term memory. The more often you try to remember something, the easier it becomes later to pull it out of memory. Children with whom parents speak, learn the ability to memorize and remember early. They are sometimes able to remember stories after the first or second reading thanks to a regimen that includes regular bedtime reading, Pop Sugar cites research.
Seven to ten years old
At the age of 7-10, when children go to school, the hippocampus (a part of the limbic system of the brain that is involved in the mechanisms of formation of emotions, consolidation of memory (that is, the transition of short-term memory to long-term memory) and the ability to recall occurs rapidly. organize and store information more logically, which is why most people have a lot of memories starting somewhere in the third grade.
Therefore, until the age of three, parents should remember and write down the most interesting things that happen to your child, so that at about 10 years old they will amaze him with how much he could and knew how to do in infancy.
Babies absorb information like a sponge - why then does it take so long for us to form the first memory of ourselves?
You met for lunch with people you have known for a long time. Together you organized parties, celebrated birthdays, went to the park, enjoyed eating ice cream, and even went on vacation with them. By the way, these people - your parents - have spent a lot of money on you over the years. The problem is that you don't remember that.
Most of us do not remember the first few years of our life at all: from the most crucial moment - birth - to the first steps, the first words, or even to kindergarten... Even after we have a precious first memory in our heads, the following "notches in memory" are rare and fragmentary until older age.
What is the reason? The gaping gap in the biography of children upsets parents and has baffled psychologists, neurologists and linguists for several decades.
The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who coined the term more than a hundred years ago "infant amnesia", and was completely obsessed with this topic.
Exploring this mental vacuum, you involuntarily wonder interesting questions... Is our first memory true or is it made up? Do we remember the events themselves or only their verbal descriptions? And is it possible one day to remember everything that seems to have not been preserved in our memory?
This phenomenon is doubly mysterious, since otherwise babies absorb new information like a sponge, forming 700 new neural connections every second and using language learning skills that any polyglot would envy.
Judging by the latest research, the baby begins to train the brain while in the womb. But even in adults, information is lost over time if no attempts are made to preserve it. Therefore, one explanation is that infant amnesia is just a consequence of natural process forgetting the events that took place during our life.
The answer to this question can be found in the work of the 19th century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who conducted a series of groundbreaking studies on himself to uncover the limits of human memory.
To make his brain look like a blank slate at the beginning of the experiment, he came up with the idea of using meaningless rows of syllables - words made at random from random letters, such as "kag" or "slans" - and began to memorize thousands of such letter combinations.
The forgetting curve that he compiled based on the results of the experience testifies to the presence of a surprisingly rapid decline in a person's ability to remember what he has learned: in the absence of special efforts, the human brain weeds out half of all new knowledge within an hour.
By the 30th day, a person remembers only 2-3% of what he learned.
One of Ebbinghaus's most important takeaways is that forgetting about information is predictable. To find out how much the memory of an infant differs from that of an adult, simply compare the graphs.
In the 1980s, after making appropriate calculations, scientists found that a person remembers surprisingly few events that took place in his life from birth to six or seven years of age. Obviously, there is something else here.
Interestingly, the veil over memories is lifted for everyone at different ages. Some people remember what happened to them at the age of two, and some did not have any memories of themselves until the age of 7-8 years. On average, snatches of memories begin to appear in a person from about three and a half years old.
Even more interesting, the degree of forgetfulness differs from country to country: the average age at which a person begins to remember himself can differ in different countries by two years.
Can these findings shed any light on the nature of such a vacuum? To find the answer to this question, psychologist Qi Wang of Cornell University (USA) collected hundreds of memories in groups of Chinese and American students.
In full accordance with national stereotypes, the Americans' stories were longer, more detailed and with a clear emphasis on themselves. The Chinese expressed themselves more succinctly and with an emphasis on facts; in general, their childhood memories began six months later. This pattern is supported by many other studies. Longer, more self-centered stories seem to be easier to remember.
It is believed that self-interest contributes to the work of memory, because when you have your own point of view, events are filled with meaning.
"It's all about the difference between the memories 'There were tigers in the zoo' and 'I saw tigers in the zoo, and although they were scary, I had a lot of fun,'" explains Robin Fivush, a psychologist at Emory University (USA).
Repeatedly conducting the same experiment, Wang interviewed the mothers of the children and found exactly the same pattern. In other words, if your memories are vague, your parents are to blame.
Van's first memory - walking in the mountains in the vicinity home in the Chinese city of Chongqing with his mother and sister. She was then about six years old. However, until she moved to the United States, it never occurred to anyone to ask her how old she remembered herself.
"V oriental cultures childhood memories are of no interest to anyone. People are just surprised: “Why do you need this?” She says. “If society makes you understand that these memories are important to you, you will keep them,” says Wang.
The earliest memories begin to form among the young Maori people of New Zealand, which are characterized by a great deal of attention to the past. Many people remember what happened to them when they were only two and a half years old.
The way we talk about our memories can also be influenced by cultural characteristics, and some psychologists believe that events begin to persist in a person's memory only after he has mastered speech.
"Language helps to structure, organize memories in the form of a narrative. By presenting an event in the form of a story, the impressions received become more ordered and easier to remember over time," says Fivush.
However, some psychologists are skeptical about the role of language in memorization. For example, children who are born deaf and grow up without knowing sign language begin to remember themselves from about the same age. This suggests that we cannot remember the first years of our life just because our brain is not yet equipped with the necessary instrumentation.
This explanation was the result of an examination of the most famous patient in the history of neurology, known under the pseudonym H.M. After an unsuccessful operation to cure epilepsy in H.M. the hippocampus was damaged, he lost the ability to remember new events.
"This is the focus of our ability to learn and remember. If it were not for the hippocampus, I would not have been able to remember our conversation later," explains Jeffrey Fagen, who researches issues related to memory and learning at St. John's University (USA).
It is interesting to note, however, that a patient with a hippocampal injury could nevertheless assimilate other types of information - just like a baby. When scientists asked him to draw a five-pointed star from its reflection in a mirror (it's harder than it seems!), He improved with every attempt, although every time it seemed to him as if he was drawing it for the first time.
Perhaps at an early age, the hippocampus is simply not sufficiently developed to form full-fledged memories of events. During the first few years of life in baby monkeys, rats and children, neurons continue to be added to the hippocampus, and during infancy, none of them are able to remember anything for long.
At the same time, apparently, as soon as the body stops creating new neurons, they suddenly acquire this ability. "In young children and babies, the hippocampus is very poorly developed," says Feigen.
But does this mean that in an underdeveloped state, the hippocampus eventually loses its accumulated memories? Or are they not forming at all? Since childhood events can continue to influence our behavior long after we forget about them, some psychologists believe that they will probably remain in our memory.
“The memories may be stored in some place that is not currently available, but this is very difficult to prove empirically,” explains Feigen.
However, we should not overly trust what we remember about that time - it is possible that our childhood memories are largely false and we remember events that never happened to us.
Elizabeth Loftes, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, USA, devoted her research to this topic.
“People can pick up ideas and start visualizing them, making them indistinguishable from memories,” she says.
Imaginary events
Loftes herself knows firsthand how it happens. When she was 16, her mother drowned in the pool. Many years later, a relative convinced her that it was she who discovered the surfaced body. Loftes was flooded with "memories", but a week later the same relative called her back and explained that she was mistaken - the body was found by someone else.
Of course, no one likes to hear that his memories are not real. Loftes knew that she needed indisputable evidence to convince doubters. Back in the 1980s, she recruited volunteers for the study and began tossing "memories" at them herself.
Loftes came up with a sophisticated lie about childhood trauma, which they allegedly received by being lost in a store, where they were later found by some kind old woman and taken to their parents. For more credibility, she dragged into the story of family members.
"We told the study participants," We talked to your mother and she told us about what happened to you. "
Almost a third of the subjects fell into a set trap: some managed to "remember" this event in all its details.
In fact, sometimes we are more confident in the accuracy of our imaginary memories than in the events that actually took place. And even if your memories are based on real events, it is quite possible that they were subsequently reformatted and reformatted based on conversations about the event, and not your own memories of it.
Remember when you thought how much fun it would be to transform your sister into a zebra with a permanent marker? Or did you just see it on a family video? And that awesome cake that your mom baked when you were three? Maybe your older brother told you about him?
Perhaps the biggest mystery is not why we do not remember our earlier childhood, but whether our memories can be believed at all.
First steps, first gift, first day at the pool. You photograph and film your baby's achievements for the DiviMIR Internet space. But at what age does a child begin to memorize himself? And how can you help children capture certain events in their memory? You will learn more about this later in our article.
The baby will not remember anything about the first three years of life. Despite the fact that during this period a lot of new things happen in the child's life. He will not remember how at first New Year got a teddy bear, or how he dropped a box of chocolates off the table.
Childhood forgetting
Sigmund Freud was the first to describe the phenomenon of “childhood forgetting”: memories of the first six years of life cannot be restored, as they are burdened with sexual taboos and aggression. This concept is rejected by modern psychoanalysts, although there is still no common point of view regarding this problem. Research continues and it may soon be possible to pinpoint the cause of childhood forgetting.
Three factors of memorization
Researchers believe that memory requires a combination of three factors.
1. Language.
The use of a native language triggers the autobiographical memory mechanism that stores our personal memories. Memories that we in childhood could not yet describe in words cannot be restored in the future. Pictures from early childhood are stored in our memory, but we cannot extract them.
2. Maturation of the brain
The brain of a young child is different from that of an adult. Only during puberty do nerve cells improve to such an extent that conditions for reliable memorization are created. In infants and young children, memory functions at a primitive level, it develops over several years into a complex system. Babies only remember things that are conditioned by reflexes: for example, you need to suck on your breast to get enough. Or the smell of a mother. Later they begin to remember who the grandfather is, what the ball looks like. Between the ages of 1 and 3, the child's brain develops so intensively that autobiographical memory is triggered.
3. Personal development
Between the ages of 2 and 3, children develop an idea of who they are. They begin to realize that they are in control of their lives. In this phase, children learn to identify yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Although the child does not have an understanding of the past, present and future, he already knows how to reproduce some memories in his mind.
Stories lead to memories
The three above factors begin to interact only by the age of 3 years of a child's life. Until that time, reliable memorization is impossible.
But some people believe that they remember events until the age of three. According to scientists, this is a complete delusion. Sometimes we take for the truth what was not. Or what our parents and relatives told us about. It begins to seem to us that we really remember this, and the imagination finishes the picture. Photos in which we are captured at an early age help create the illusion of our own memories. And now it seems to us that we remember the joyous moment of giving a teddy bear for the new year.
What do we remember
No one can say with certainty what exactly children will remember in the future. But it is known that the more emotions accompanied the event, the better it will be remembered. It doesn't matter if the child was sad, happy, or ashamed.
Memories of smells and tastes are especially vivid. For example, about the smell of grandma's apple pies. Olfactory memory is very ancient and helped to ensure survival in primitive times. The ability to associate memories with certain smells is also in our modern people.
There is no person who could remember everything that happened to him in childhood. Often only a few pictures remain in the memory. We cannot remember specific events, but we always remember the feelings of happiness, joy, fear or despair we experienced in childhood.
What are memories for?
Wonderful childhood memories make us happy. Thanks to the joy experienced, endorphins are released, which strengthens the immune system and increases activity.
Memories of the past make up a large part of our personality. Keeping in mind good and bad events, positive and negative emotions makes us special, reveals our character traits and defines sensitivity.
Prepare wonderful memories for your child
Unfortunately, it is not that easy. You can teach your child how to handle a fork and knife and cover their mouth when sneezing. But one cannot impose on him what he must remember in the future. Each person has his own treasury of memories, and no one can say why one event was erased from memory, and the other was so strongly imprinted, as if it happened 10 minutes ago.
Still, parents can influence the memories of their children. To prepare wonderful memories, experienced specialists of the newspaper and DiviMIR services recommend following some principles.
1. Focus on the tastes of the child
Children like it when attention is focused on them, when they are entertained, even if the adults seem to be silly. Each parent knows what exactly his child likes: walking around the zoo, swimming in the pool, riding on the shoulders of dad. Your favorite games and activities should be organized as often as possible. In this case, it is highly likely that the child will remember these events well.
2. Take care of repetition
For adults, the endless repetition of games, songs and jokes seems boring, but children can play the same thing for a very long time. Do not get angry, but let your favorite activities repeat as much as the child needs. Frequently recurring events are better imprinted in memory than one-time events.
3. Talk about your experiences
Many people like to get together in the evening with the whole family and discuss the events of the past day. Talking about new events helps to keep them in memory for a long time. In addition, the experience during the day appears in dreams at night. Before going to bed, you need to once again remember what happened today.
4. More movement
It sounds corny, but it really works: Walking or cycling helps release the hormones of happiness. They help us see what is happening in a brighter light and are therefore easier to remember. Play outdoor games with your child, fly a kite, throw pebbles into the water, arrange fights with snowballs - provide him with happy memories for a lifetime.
