Infantile Amnesia

Infantile Amnesia
SURABHI OJHA
University of Mumbai, India
Internal Evaluation of Paper 4- Experimental Psychology. AbstractIt seems everything that Freud was interested and studied became controversial,

because of two reasons, one- Freuds own psychoanalytic perspective on psychological concepts and secondly these concepts were difficult to verify empirically. Though now with experimental advancements a lot of these concepts are studied more frequently and in depth. And infantile amnesia being one of these concepts has gathered a lot of curiosity and criticism, both at the same time. There are numerous studies done in the past decade to clear some air about it. This literature review is a review of studies done in last 5 years.

Keywords: Infantile Amnesia, Childhood Amnesia, Fluency Test, Memory Dating, Gender differences.

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INTRODUCTION The phenomenon of Infantile Amnesia (Childhood Amnesia) is very well established in psychological literature. It is the inability to remember early life events and very poor memory for life at a very young age. One of the first people to discuss this phenomenon was Sigmund Freud (1899/1938). He believed that our earliest memories were acquired and stored in pristine condition but actively repressed because of their emotionally and sexually charged content. Bauer(2007) differentiated between two phases of infantile amnesia: A period of total amnesia (prior to individuals first memory) And second is a period of Partial Amnesia (between that first memory and when the numbers of memories become similar to that for later ages). In the time of partial amnesia, individuals retrieve fewer memories than expected, a very few from preschool years with increasing numbers from early elementary years. It takes place around 7-8 years of age. Average age of earliest memory for adults from Western European culture is around 3 years and a large body of research with adult participants showed very little or no recall of memories or events before the age of 3-4 years (Ruben 2000) and hence confirm the earlier finding. There is a wide variation seen in the individuals in their age of earliest memory. Memories that are identified as occurring from infancy or young adulthood are often treated with suspicion because they date from an age so much earlier than most people can remember. It is really difficult to verify the claims empirically. And so most of the times memories from Partial Amnesia period are challenged.

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Theories explaining Infantile Amnesia: In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in childhood amnesia, but this time around what is different in the recent studies from the earlier studies is that now it is being studied in children rather than just adults. The concept is studied from many aspects, like from the crosscultural differences view, gender differences, age differences etc.. It has also played important role in forensic arena and the court cases. It has been studied in detail with all these views and many hypotheses have been put forward. There are various theories of infantile amnesia: 1. Human Cognitive/ Psychological theories- Human Psychological theories emphasize that the ability to form enduring memories (offset of infantile amnesia) in humans, coincides with emergence of developmental milestones such as the acquisition of a sense of self (Howe and Courage,1993). 2. Impairment in Memory, Encoding, Storage or recall- information processing theories postulate that infantile amnesia results from impaired memory encoding/ storage and / or retrieved other explanations of infantile amnesia focus on memory retrieval and postulate that the memory formed in childhood are permanently stored and always exist, but that these memories simply cannot be accessed during childhood. Then according to this view Freud was perhaps the first and strongest proponent of the memory retrieval deficit hypotheses of infantile amnesia. However, neurobiology explains infantile amnesia based on the fact that the hippocampus is still immature and non functional during early infancy. In the initial years of life only neural structures related to the implicit system of memory such as amygdale are active. The hippocampus which is related to explicit memory develops later (Anooshian 1998; Joseph, 1996).

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EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCESAge differences: With regard to age as being a variable there are quite a few studies done. In one study it was shown that older children (6-9 years old) had earlier first memories than did younger children, i.e. younger childrens average age at the time of their first memory was 3 years according to memory dating by their parents, whereas for older children (10-14 years old) it was approximately 3 years (Peterson et. al. 2008). Later research replicated these results when children and adults were directly compared: children in grades 2 and 5 had earlier memories than did children in grades 8 and 9 as well as adults (Peterson, Noel, Kippenhuck, Harmundal & Vincent. 2009). This initial finding was also seen in subsequent research that included additional children, especially at young ages (Peterson, Warren & Short, 2011). In this study children ranged in age from 4-13 years of age. In their initial interview the mean age of earliest memory for the children in the age group of 4-5, 6-7 was 27.6 and 24.2 months, respectively, which was not expected. However, this shift upward in the age of earliest memory was also found in recent cross-sectional research conducted in New Zealand (Jack, MacDonald, Reese & Hayne.2009, Tustine & Hayne.2010). The most salient finding of both studies is that the childrens age at the time of their earliest memory derives from a later age as children get older, at least up through their primary school years. This was found not only in cross-sectional study but also in the first study to investigate childhood amnesia longitudinally in children (Peterson et al 2011). When the same children were re-interviewed after 2 years, the overall mean age of the earliest memory for all children shifted from 32.0 to 39.6 months, a shift of more than 7 months. The investigators also asked children to describe their 2nd and 3rd earliest memories and the overall mean age of their 3 earliest memories shifted even more from 44.4 to 56.5 months, a shift of a year.
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To study such differences longitudinal study should be conducted which was done by Peterson et al (2011). They found that whether or not children provided the same earliest memories at both time points depends upon their age. They found that older children were not only more consistent in which memory they identified as their earliest, they were also more consistent in the specific content of those memories. They found that participants included information that orients the memories in both time and place (context), whether the narrative events could be placed on a time line by a listener (chronology) and whether there was an early developed focus to the narrative (theme) all predicted memory survival, with thematic coherence the most important of the three. Other characteristics of memories that were retained versus forgotten were also examined. The length of the memories in terms of number of words used to describe them was not a predictor, nor was the uniqueness of the events (versus a repeated event), nor the presence of reminder like photos, videos or family discussion (Peterson et. al. 2012).

Methods to study Infantile Amnesia: One method which is quite frequently used in the studies of memory recalling is the Memory Fluency task in which the individuals are asked to recall as many memories from their earliest years as they can in a timed task (Wang, Conway & Hou, 2004). This procedure shows whether individuals are able to readily access only very few memories or instead have ready access to a number of memories. Peterson et. al. (2009) used this task and made a direct comparison between children and adults for the accessibility of memories prior to school entry stage. They found that children in grades 2 and 5 were able to access more memories from earlier ages than could adults. The study concluded that children have childhood amnesia too, just like adults. But the earliest memories of
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younger children date from an earlier age than those recalled by older children, and thus some memories are forgotten as children get older. However there is still considerable variability between individuals influenced by factors such as culture and factors like event salience, emotionality and memory coherence. Thus infantile/ childhood amnesia in children is dynamic and reflects both change and stability over time. One more criterion by which they study recall of earlier memories is Memory Dating. Participants are asked to date the memories, as in how old the memories are or how old were they when the event being described happened. Accuracy in dating memory is studied. Dates given by the participants are then compared with the dates given by their parents. Although parents can also misremember the dates, but the chances of making mistakes in them is far less than chances of error by the participants. In a study researchers found systematic difference between childrens and parents memory dating and this was true across all ages and cultures. First empirical evidence for the accuracy of childrens dating of very long-term memories was found in the study done by Wang, Peterson and Hou. They held that when childrens age estimate of early childhood memory were verified for each memory dated rather than the overall mean estimate, systematic errors were identified. A telescoping effect (when a memory is dated as occurred more recent than its original date) was found for later memories. The fact that this pattern was consistent across ages and cultures suggests that it is a powerful effect that calls for attention from memory researchers and investigates further.

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Cross- cultural Studies: Peterson, Wang & Hou (2009), used memory fluency task in the cross-cultural study. They asked children of Western European origin and Chinese children in the age group of 11-14 to recall as many memories as possible for them to recall in a timed task, before starting the school and also to date each memory according to them. Their parents confirmed and dated the memories as well. Cultural differences were found in both measures from the earliest age at which they collected data, and these cultural differences became larger with increasing child age. Canadian childrens earliest memory was more than a year earlier than that of the Chinese children with mean ages being 28. 2, versus 41.4 months, respectively. The content of the recalled memories also differed depending upon the childrens culture. Canadian childrens memories were most likely to centre around themselves, often with no mention of other people. In contrast Chinese childrens memories were more likely to involve other people, i.e. social rather than individual in focus. Many experiences during infancy implicitly impact later life (Hackman et. al., 2010). Infantile amnesia typically refers to the absence of declarative memory. One predominant view is that although children can learn and remember information for a short period of time, these memories are quickly forgotten or become otherwise inaccessible (Bauer, 2007, Rovee, Collier and Ceuvas, 2009) i.e. give equivalent levels of encoding, older infants remember for longer than younger infant. Support for age related changes in childhood forgetting derives from server findings. For instance, Rovee, Collier snd colleagues showed that the memory retention increase linearly with the age of the children at the time of training (Rovee, Collier and Cuevas. 2009). The absolute retention was striking although 2 months old infants exhibited memory that lasted 24 hours, 18 months old infants exhibited retention for as long as 13 weeks. Because all infants were trained

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to the same criterion, the authors concluded that the age relatively changes in memory retention were independent of possible differences in the original encoding of the information. Tustin and Hayne (2010) in a study interviewed participants ranging in age from 5 to 20 years about their earliest childhood memories. Although 5 years olds recalled events that took place when they were just 1 year old, adults showed the traditional lack of memories prior to 3 years of age. They concluded that young children from episodic memories beginning very early in the childhood, but they forgot these memory over time.

Early family interactions and their impacts: To find out the family and especially mother-child interactions in early age impact a study was conducted. It was hypothesized that mother and child reminiscing about the past contributes to the offset of childhood amnesia although this possible influence has not been empirically established (eg. Fivush, Haden & Reese, 2006; Jack et. al., 2009; Reese & White, 2010). They concluded that since high elaborative mothers ask a lot of questions, provide additional details to the conversations, prompt their child to provide additional information evaluate response and attempts to co-construct a narrative of the event with their child (Fivush et. al., 2006; Kukofsky, Wang & Koh, 2009). On the other hand low elaborative mothers generally talk less and ask a series of repetitive questions in the form of a memory test without providing additional contextual information in the conversations (Kulkofsky et. al. 2009).

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Gender Differences: Almost all of infantile amnesia studies have been conducted with adults, and gender differences favoring women are frequently found. This was seen in both the memory recall and frequency task. Cross-cultural comparisons have also frequently found gender differences favoring women, although not always, particularly in cultures that tends to devaluate women. Women also found to recall more memories when their parents were warmer and more involved in their lives, and men with warmer relationships with mothers had an earlier age of first memory. However, participants were directed to only recall memory that involved their parents and it is not clear how much this limitation affected the results, especially since the majority of early memories do not involves parents (Peterson, Wang, & Hou, 2009). A number of researchers have found that the emotional memories are most likely to be retained over time. Emotional tone can be either positive or negative, and both sorts of memory are retained better than those for neutral events. In terms of gender, women tend to recall more detailed and emotion-filled memories. They also seem to recall more detailed and emotion filled memories. Gender differences have also been found cross-culturally (MacDonald et. al., 2004; Mullen, 1994; Wang et. al., 2004) although they are not always found (Hayne & MacDonald, 2003; Peterson, Noel, Kippenhuck, Hurmundal & Vincent, 2009). In contrast, some recent investigations of infantile amnesia in children have not found parallel gender differences, for example, no gender differences have been found for the age of childrens single earliest memory (Peterson, Wang, & Hou, 2009; Tustin & Hayne, in press). However gender differences were found for the groups that had to do the task in a group setting with participants writing down notes on their own memories. In contrast, there were no gender

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difference for either task whether participants were orally interviewed by a researcher, but they also took notes of their memories.

These findings suggest that gender in and of itself may not be as important be as important as an interaction between gender and other factors. For example- it may be that motivation differs between males and females when an impersonally administered task is given but when someone is confronted face to face with an interviewer who seems to care about how well you were doing. Motivation is greater for both genders and memory in particular may try harder to research their memory to produce as many memories as they can.

Conclusion: Infantile Amnesia has created curiosity in the research fields since Freudian times. It has been in controversies throughout. Some reject it straight away, while others accept it partially. There are numerous theories proposed and various studies conducted. Still it remains unclear. As to whether it happens or not, or happens only in adults or even in children, different testing tools give different conclusions. It has gathered enough attention, like other concepts that interested Freud, and will continue to do so in future.

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REFRENCESPeterson, C. et al. Infantile amnesia and gender: does the way we measure it matter? Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 17671771 West, A.W., Bauer, P. J., Assumptions of Infantile Amnesia: Are There Difference Between Early and Later Memories?. Memory,1997 (3),257-278 Morris, G., Ward, L. B.,Bauer, P. J., What Remains of that Day: The survival of Childrens Autobiographical Memories Across Time. Appl. Cognit. Psycho.24:527-544(2010) Peterson,C., Nguyen,D. T. K., Parent- Child relationship quality and Infantile Amnesia in Adults. British Journal of Psychology (2010), 101, 719-737 Peterson, C., Warren, K. L., Short, M. M., Infantile Amnesia Across the Years: A 2-year Follow up of Childrens Earliest Memories. Child Development, July/ August 2011, Volume 82, Number 4, Pages 1092-1105 Peterson, C., et. al., A distant mirror: Memories of parents and friends across childhood and adolescence. British Journal of Psychology (2010), 101, 601620

Haden, C. A., et al. The development of childrens early memory skills. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2010),

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