Childhood memories lost in the haze

Reuters News

Are childhood memories just as strong as those acquired later on? According to a team of researchers, the intuitive answer is the correct one: "people really do remember less about things that happen to them in childhood," says Dr. Nora S. Newcombe of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Newcombe explained to Reuters Health that "psychologists have lately been busy demonstrating that preschoolers, and even infants, do have memories. We agree with that -- we just think their memories can be overstated in the enthusiasm about finding memory at all," she said.
To take a closer look at what has been termed "childhood amnesia" -- an inability to accurately recall specific events of early childhood -- Newcombe and colleagues evaluated a number of studies of childhood memory, according to a report in the April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.

The investigators found that "not only is verbal recall for childhood events sketchy, but visual memories of familiar faces from childhood are sketchy as well." They add, however, that children do tend to remember some things with a level of accuracy that surpasses mere chance.
Although childhood experiences may be largely forgotten, they still have an impact on an individual's life, Newcombe said.

When it comes to forgotten memory, an individual may "still retain its impact, at least sometimes, in the form of altered bodily states or improved perceptual processing when they encounter something they have seen before," Newcombe said. In her view, this is an important distinction "because it indicates some scientific support for the claim that 'the body knows' about certain past events."

The researchers note that not all memories are equal in childhood. They cite as an example, "semantic memory" or knowledge of facts and words. Very young children easily learn the thousands of words and underlying concepts that comprise language. "What they seem not to do as well is to encode and retain what are called episodic memories, that is, memories for particular events or particular stimuli occurring in particular contexts," the team writes.

This combination of memory plus context apparently requires a well-developed prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with many functions including short-term memory and decision-making. According to Newcombe, she and her colleagues "found some support for the idea that the improvement in memory during the preschool years is linked to development in the prefrontal areas of the brain."

"This is important because it gives avenues to explore the interaction of nature and nurture in development (and) may also help (us) to understand other aspects of cognitive development... and social development... and their linkages," she explained.

SOURCE: Current Directions in Psychological Science 2000;9:55-58.