
Childhood amnesia kicks in around age 7 - fortepianissimo
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/01/childhood-amnesia-kicks-in-around-age-7.html
======
mililani
I have distinct memories of when I was 2-3 y.o. that have astounded my
parents. I was raised in Korea till I was about 3, then we all flew to Hawaii
to immigrate to the U.S. I remember the flight, I remember my life in Korea, I
remember going to the public spa's with my dad, I remember feeling ashamed of
my nudity in front of many older folks around me. I told all of this to my
parents later in life, and they were amazed. I even distinctly remember the
time when I thought I was lost, being scared, walking through a tunnel only to
emerge to find a statue of some Korean soldiers. My parents found me and took
a picture of me pointing at that statue. I asked my mom about that time, and I
said, "How did I get lost? I was scared." My mom said that they were following
me from afar, making sure I didn't see them, and they wanted to see how I
would explore the world.

I've told people about this many times. And, people just can't or won't
believe me. A history professor told me that this is impossible, because
children can't remember anything before the age of 3. He was adamant about it,
and completely dismissive of my claims. I think these kinds of pseudo-
scientific research (you know, taking polls and applying statistics) should be
taken with a grain of salt. One should NOT draw definitive conclusions from
them.

~~~
tedks
>And, people just can't or won't believe me.

It seems to me that not believing you is the right thing to do. Childhood
amnesia is well-studied; false memories are equally well-studied and are
easily formed; since the former is more probable than an exception to the
latter, unless you have additional evidence (which you can't really produce),
I have no reason to believe your claims.

It's more probable that you reconstructed those memories from stories told by
other people, even if you forgot hearing those stories before remembering the
event, than that you're an exception to a well-studied and widely documented
event.

Cognitive psychology is hardly psuedo-science, and in this instance, there
were no polls conducted. This was a longitudinal study that took considerable
resources to conduct and involved a seemingly well-designed experimental test.
The findings are entirely in line with what the rest of the data in the field
suggests, so it shouldn't be controversial. There were no polls involved,
either.

It's frustrating to believe something that contradicts most available
evidence, and it must be even more frustrating to not have a way to
demonstrate the truth of such a belief. You'll notice that even this article
doesn't claim that all memory prior to age 7 is irretrievably erased, and it's
fully possible you truly have the memories you have -- but it's nonetheless
improbable, and it isn't wrong to disbelieve you.

~~~
electrograv
> It seems to me that not believing you is the right thing to do.

I'm sorry, but you have your science backwards. You don't dismiss evidence
because it doesn't fit your current hypothesis.

Most significantly though, you grossly misunderstand statistics/surveys if you
think it's possible to extract definitive physiological truths out of a
subjective "how do you feel about remembering X?" survey.

For what it's worth anecdotally, I also can access memories from when I was
3-4 years old, and I can easily prove they're not fabricated memories because
the memories in particular were not retold, and in some cases took some effort
to actually confirm when I was the only one remembering them (even parents
forgot).

Usually the memories are misc. trivia -- e.g. the design of the wallpaper of a
house I only lived in until I was 4, a certain set of kids' cups I only used
until I was 6, etc. There is no way these are false memories, because nobody
told such things to me. I also remember some of my thoughts as a very young
child, which is interesting, because they're very different from adult
thoughts (though obviously I can't really "confirm" this in the same way I can
physical memories).

Anyone saying childhood amnesia occurs completely is completely misguided. Of
course, I have "childhood amnesia" like everyone else in the sense that most
of those memories I haven't accessed in a long time, and can't recall them
_instantly_ at will. But they're still there, and I can access them with
meditation if I want.

~~~
pgsandstrom
> I'm sorry, but you have your science backwards. You don't dismiss evidence
> because it doesn't fit your current hypothesis.

It is you who are misunderstanding either science, or what Tedks is saying.
Mililanis story is not evidence, it is an anecdote. Based on our understanding
of the human mind, it is simply more likely that his/hers story is a false
memory rather than a true memory from a young age. Obviously it could be a
true memory, but it is unlikely.

On the topic of false memories: I actually have several memories from a young
age that directly contradicts with each other. I remember longing for a
specific Nintendo game. I also remember getting the game as a christmas gift,
looking at the box thinking "this looks like crap, why did they buy this?".

~~~
Shorel
Well may be the TV ad for the game was much better than the box art of the
game. It can happen.

I see no contradiction there.

------
drcube
I remember several things from before I was 3 (and plenty more after that),
but I'm always unsure if it is an actual memory, or a memory of a memory.

I was a pretty introspective kid. I thought about my past and tried to recall
my childhood even at the young age of 5. So perhaps my earliest memories are
really just memories of being 6 or 7 and thinking back to when I was 2. Second
hand memories, so to speak.

~~~
thirdsight
Perhaps your memories are things your parents said when you were 7 that you
did when you were two as well?

That's how I figure it works in my head.

~~~
drcube
I suspect many of my early memories come from my parents, but there are quite
a few that they don't remember at all. Those are probably memories of
memories.

------
mrmekon
I see two other people commenting about framing memories based on moving at a
young age. I have the same thing, and I wonder if moving at a young age
correlates with higher childhood memories.

I moved when I was 7, and it's a _very_ distinct transition in the quality of
my memories. I have tons of pre-move memories, including one confirmed by my
parents as my 2nd birthday party, but they're primitive. No sense of time,
just a jumble of memories that I can't place chronologically, and most are
very brief moments. However, I remember the move and everything after it
vividly and in chronological order.

I would suppose that the move made me reminisce about my old home during the
period when my childhood memories were fading, and saved many of them from
being lost.

~~~
batbomb
I moved houses once a year every year until I was 7. I can remember things
just after I was two years old, the floor plans of my parents house,
grandparents house, christmas when I was 3, parents friends houses, memories
of those things, lots of other things. My parents didn't believe me until I
told them the floorplans. Some memories are a little fuzzy, but I remember
parts of every place I've lived since I was two years old. Sometimes random
memories will pop up that I forgot about. My earliest memory my parents were
able to pinpoint to about 26 months old (we moved to a new city at 30 months,
and my memory was of my dad leaving to work at night which he had stopped
doing sometime around when I was 27 months).

Maybe more interesting is that I can't remember a single seizure my brother
who had epilepsy had, although I can remember before and after moments (ages 3
and 4).

------
ToastyMallows
All I remember about when I was young is due to looking at photo/video of the
event, and then later on, when I'm "remembering" the event, I'm really
remembering the photo/video. I'd say I have close to 0 legitimate memories of
when I was young. Anyone else?

~~~
nlh
I have a few "flashes" of very clear memories from < 3 ... I very vividly
remember a single moment of being in my crib (I recall the high walls, the
feeling of the felt base, etc.) I have an equally vivid memory of the first
night I spent in my "big boy bed" (mostly I remember experiencing fear and
anxiety, and that wooden side rail meant to keep me from falling out). And I
remember toddling around my house, seeing this incredibly juicy and tempting
big button that just needed to be pushed, and then a lot a lot of chaos (it
was an old-school panic button that set off our house burglar alarm ;)

But the flood of real memories doesn't start until nursery school, which was
right around 3-4.

On a related note, there's a different type of memory that started to form
later and that I can pinpoint to a VERY specific age...I refer to it as
"cultural awareness/memory". I.e. movies, songs on the radio, etc. I was born
in '78 and my earliest memories of that sort of stuff is all '85 (i.e. 7 years
old). And what a year! Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, "We Built This City",
"Born in the USA", etc.

I can barely remember any movies/songs from before then...maybe some in 84,
but 83 is a basically non-existent to me. So maybe this is the sort of thing
they mean when they're referring to "adult memories" ?

Aaaaand now I feel old.

~~~
jmcgough
> mostly I remember experiencing fear and anxiety, and that wooden side rail
> meant to keep me from falling out

It's theorized that the amygdala has a "gating" function for memory - we tend
to recall memories more easily when they're highly emotional (especially
anxiety, fear, trauma). I had a cognitive science professor who brought this
up and asked people in the class what their earliest memories were - many of
them were scary/anxious events (mine was moving out of an apartment and into a
house).

~~~
dspig
My earliest memory is definitely strongly emotional - a recurring nightmare
when I was 3 or younger (I know that because we moved house) was of a big tube
sucking on my belly. I can't imagine that was a memory then of having an
umbilical cord, but maybe someone fooling around with a vacuum cleaner...

------
thaumasiotes
The opening to the article:

> You could travel the world with an infant aged under 3 and it's almost
> guaranteed that when they get older they won't remember a single boat trip,
> plane ride or sunset. This is thanks to a phenomenon, known as childhood or
> infantile amnesia, that means most of us lose all our earliest
> autobiographical memories. It's a psychological conundrum because when they
> are 3 or younger, kids are able to discuss autobiographical events from
> their past. So it's not that memories from before age 3 never existed, it's
> that they are subsequently forgotten.

This is obviously tremendously overblown. I could just as easily point out
that people who are over 60 frequently have no memory of things (even
significant things) that happened in their 20s. It's a "psychological
conundrum" because people in their 20s are able to discuss current events!

Memories, no matter when they originate from, fade with disuse. We have plenty
of people, here and outside, who can attest to preserving early memories.
Attacking them on the grounds that those memories could be reconstructions
instead of strengthened "true" memories doesn't make any sense -- all memories
are reconstructions; there is no possible way to distinguish between a "true
memory" and a "reconstructed memory" _at any age_.

All that said, the coolest experiment I know of in this area concerned
visiting children still in the process of language acquisition with a
"marvelous machine" designed to be highly entertaining and memorable. The
experiment showed that though the children remembered the machine a (couple?)
years later, when asked about their memories of it, they would describe it
using only words they knew at the time of the visit.

~~~
taeric
You can point that out, but is it true? The 20s seems to be an age that folks
obsess over. Almost as bad as high school years.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I can only recommend asking some old people about this. Your grandparents?

~~~
taeric
And those are the ones I know (or, well, knew) who still remember college
times. Some still likened back to their high school years.

In other words, that whole anecdotes not necessarily being data thing. This
study seems to show by and large there is something significant around the 7
year mark. Are there similar studies on other years?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> And those are the ones I know (or, well, knew) who still remember college
> times. Some still likened back to their high school years.

I don't understand the relevance of this. There is no conflict between
remembering swathes of your college and high school years, and forgetting
other swathes. It covers a lot of time (and your 20s cover even more than
that); there's plenty of room to forget large parts of it while remembering
others.

~~~
taeric
I know _far more_ people who have no reliable memory of pre 7 than I do of any
that have no reliable memory of their 20s.

Now, you seem to be saying it is simply a matter of the age of the memory. But
you are completely disregarding the study, which shows that children around
the age of 8 have a _massive_ dropoff in what they can remember from a scant 2
years ago. This isn't a case of 2 years being a significant time. Indeed, they
went out of their way to show that at age 6 they had a high recollection of
things 2 years prior.

If there are studies on this at other ages, I'm interested. But the dismissive
"older memories of course are lost" seems somewhat rude. Do you have specific
questions with their techniques on how they established 7 as a significant
age? Do you just think there would be other significant ages, as well?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> But you are completely disregarding the study, which shows that children
> around the age of 8 have a massive dropoff in what they can remember from a
> scant 2 years ago.

> Indeed, they went out of their way to show that at age 6 they had a high
> recollection of things 2 years prior.

You have misread something. The study does not make reference to any 6-year-
olds, or 8-year-olds, being tested for recall of events 2 years prior. The
events tested always occurred at age three; they are comparing 5-year-olds'
recall of events two years prior to 6-year-olds' recall of events three years
prior to 7-year-olds' recall of events four years prior to 8-year-olds' recall
of events five years prior to 9-year-olds' recall of events six years prior.

Furthermore, I specifically didn't say it's a matter of the age of the memory.
If I had meant that, I would have said something like "memories fade with
time". What I did say was "memories fade with disuse". If you exercise a
memory (whether a true one or a false one), it will become stronger. If you
don't, you will lose it.

~~~
taeric
Indeed, it looks like I misread a few things and then just got confused.
Apologies on that.

Back to the specifics of this article. This study was more about whether
conversational differences in discussing memories related to their retention.
It appears they have some evidence that this could be the case. And note, they
specifically looked at _how_ it was discussed. All memories were discussed.

------
jayhuang
I remember one event from back when I was a bit over 1.

My mom took me to her friend's shop, they had 2 daughters and a chihuahua. One
of the daughters (~5 years old) picked up the chihuahua and held it in front
of my stroller, within reach. She urged me to pet it, and when I did, the dog
bit the first joint of my left ring finger off. I remember that part, I
remember crying, but I don't remember having it sewn back on.

To this day, I'm irrationally horrified of tiny dogs (I like big ones as long
as they don't bark and show teeth).

Sidenote: Whoever sewed it back on didn't do a very good job; you can see it's
slightly slanted and a bit rotated too. =( I'm thankful for getting it back
though.

------
Mz
My earliest memory is of riding on my mother's lap in a tank. My older sister
tells me I must have been less than 18 months old as this would have been a
family day event at Fort Benning Georgia in the fall before we left for
Germany. I was born in June, so this puts me around age 15 to 17 months. So
the tank must have made a really big impression on me.

While in therapy in my twenties, at some point, I spontaneously remembered my
own birth. In my teens, I knew a woman who claimed to remember her own birth.
I think she was born outside and there was snow on the ground, so perhaps the
shock of it made an impression?

My oldest son is able to access his early childhood memories. He is a visual
and kinesthetic thinker and had trouble learning to talk. It took practice for
him to be able to access them reliably and it involved him essentially
translating them into English for the first time. I accidentally tripped
across the fact that he had memories from infancy, which is a longish story
that I don't have time to type out.

Short version: I think there is still lots to be learned about how early
memories are formed, accessed, etc.

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goatforce5
My earliest (or one of the earliest) memories is of a guy in a mascot costume
coming to our preschool to promote a bank. I think they gave us some money
boxes, and I guess they were trying to teach us about the importance of saving
money. I would have been 3 or 4 at the time.

35+ years on I can still vividly remember the mascot, which bank it was, etc.

It saddens me that my earliest memory is of a form of advertising.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I wonder, if there was a video available of this, how closely your memory
would match the actual event.

------
flatline
My earliest memories are very clear, and I astounded my father when I
recounted them as a teenager. I remember riding in the car by my dad's work at
the University, and seeing owls on the facade of some of the buildings. We
always stopped at one building in particular. Obviously some of the context
for the memories is pieced together from when I was older -- e.g. The fact
that I was riding in the car. I distinctly remember my dad pointing out the
owls and saying the word for "owl" but being unable to remember/grok the word,
for example.

Anyway when I was a teenager we drove by the building we used to stop at and I
told my dad about these early memories. It turns out that my mother had been
seeing a therapist in that building on campus and once a week we would drive
by to do a pickup and drop off. He was so shocked because they never discussed
the matter with anyone, so he figured it was a real memory.

According to my dad I was six months old.

------
steeve
I had meningitis when I was 2, and I clearly remember a flash of when I was in
the hospital bed, with all the gear monitoring me, trying to reach out for my
blanket. My mother confirmed my story when I was ~20.

It's pretty vivid actually, and not only do I remember the "scene" but also
how I felt and what I thought.

I have a few others like that, but this is the most ancient.

------
adinb
Now they need to test for the type of memory recalled, is there a difference
in emotionally laden memories vs non emotional 'moment' or experience based
memories?

And what is the recall on 'pure' emotional memories?(Where the memory is
primarily about the emotion, not what was occuring at the time).

This would be incredibly useful in counseling psychology (and possibly
neuropsych), where emotional based memories can get corrupted or ingrained
into a person's overall personality. (Think of getting burned by a stove
becoming anything from a subconscious jerk away from a stove to full phobias).

------
V-2
Like many people, I have a few early memories (3.5, 4 yrs old).

But I can't stop wondering - do I __really __remember them, or do I only
remember remembering them?

I mean, is it a "direct" memory? Or is it an act of recollecting a previous
recollection of it?

Like, I remembered what I did at 4 when I was 6, fine. And then, if I happened
to remember it still when I was 8, I actually remembered how I recalled the
event being 6.

This is (I believe) how distortions gradually crawl in. And I believe it
persists in adult life as well; every refreshing of a memory is actually
rewriting it, thus damaging it in a way

------
Shank
If I had to make an uneducated guess, it's probably because at early ages our
recall is vastly different compared to years later. Older memories aren't as
easily accessible because they're on different neural pathways that haven't
been used in a while.

The earliest I can remember is probably riding my first bicycle at around age
7-8, and everything after that is a flurry of memories that I have no idea
where they came from. Little bits of conversations or of rooms that used to be
in the house before they were knocked down and rebuilt, etc.

------
pbhjpbhj
> _In contrast, children aged 8 and 9 recalled fewer than 40 per cent of the
> events they 'd discussed at age 3, but those memories they did recall were
> more adult-like in their content._ //

If the memories recalled were more adult like at a later age that suggests
children recalled things at a later age that they didn't (couldn't?) recall at
an earlier age.

This seems to me the most important insight in the article in respect of
recall, that one would need greater understanding in order to recall details
that one couldn't recall earlier. But mostly that recall is not [completely]
limited by cognition.

I'm guessing that the results didn't really show that though ...

These sorts of articles just make me want to do research to rigorously address
the obvious questions that don't appear to be addressed.

------
DanielStraight
Does anyone know of other research about how to promote increased retention of
early childhood memories?

~~~
fortepianissimo
Near the end of the article:

"Specifically, mothers who used more "deflections", such as "Tell me more" and
"What happened?" tended to have children who subsequently recalled more
details of their earlier memories."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's interesting it specifies mothers - this suggests that there was a
difference with the effect with fathers. Or that they only looked at children
who never chat with their fathers?

~~~
marcosdumay
They had the mothers chatting with the children, not the fathers.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _They recorded mothers talking to their 3-year-olds about six past events,
> such as zoo visits or first day at pre-school. The researchers then re-
> established contact with the same families at different points in the
> future. Some of the children were quizzed again by a researcher when aged 5,
> others at age 6 or 7, 8 or 9. This way the researchers were able to chart
> differences in amounts of forgetting through childhood._ //

They did, but why?

In order to isolate the mothers influence and make the study capable of
providing scientific results one would need to rule out the major external
factors - the primary one in my view is paternal interactions.

If they chose only mothers to assess - and the presence of only mothers in the
other studies suggests they did - then this seems notable. Why? Did they
already have a result showing paternal interactions had no effect? Are they
trying to demonstrate a theory in which only maternal interactions are valid
for stimulating recall? Or what? Just seems like a big old hole that would
warrant a mention somewhere in such an article.

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codva
I remember my parents dropping me at the neighbors when they went to hospital
to give birth to my brother. I was a month shy of 3. Then I have nothing until
I'm about 5.

------
shawndumas
I have had a smell trigger a memory from my pre-seven-childhood. It was a
smell that I hadn't smelt in the intervening years.

It was upon meeting a distant relative that made a dish the first time I met
them and then again when I met them in my mid-twenties.

The second I smelled the smell of the dish I remembered an incident that I
alone witnessed -- getting jalapeño oil in my eye when I was sneaking some of
the dish.

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pubby
I have tons of memories of age 2 and 3. My mother would often ask me, "What
did you do today?" before I went to sleep, and so perhaps that is why I can
recall so much.

Interesting memories are: the day I saw light shine on dust particles,
watching my sister miss her first bus, and eating lint off the floor.

------
michaelsbradley
I have a large number of memories from age 2 and going forward. I can even
remember the details of conversations I heard and the physical appearance,
location and orientation of various objects that were in my environments, and
can accurately recall the floor plans of places I lived in or visited. I can't
recall a single thing prior to my second birthday, though. I'm age 37,
presently.

I've met people who, if the subject of very early memories came up in
conversation, thought it was completely normal as they have similar ones. I've
talked to other people, though, who insist that I can't possibly be telling
the truth, perhaps because they can't even imagine remembering anything that
far back.

------
vitd
There's also parental amnesia where as soon as a person has a child, they
completely forget what it was like to be a child and get very frustrated that
their children aren't adults. I see it all the time in colleagues.

------
mamcx
I wonder about other thing. I don't remember when (circa 10?), but I remember
that some day I fully get a very sad tougth: I can't dream anymore as a child.

I have the tendency to run the same kind of "history" in my dreams (obviously,
awake!) before sleep then continue it later. I remember that I was playing a
kind of war history or something (I forgot), and for the life of me, I can't
do it like before. Now I only get stuck, and things are not fluid.

Exist some info about this? When is not possible anymore to have (on command)
the same vivid dream bending as a child?

------
ds9
Isn't there also a phenomenon of elderly people recovering childhood memories?
I've always heard of this, and relatives in their 60s and 70s have told me of
vivid memories of their early life. In the same age range, they have less
memory of more recent events. It's as if the transition to childhood amnesia
is reversed. If some of this is true, it should provide clues for researchers
to pursue.

------
Morgawr
I remember a few things that happened to me when I was 2 years old. Mostly
some events when I used to play with my cat or with legos in my room.

I'm fairly sure those aren't constructed memories, not sure why some specific
memories have stuck with me compared to others from such an early age (they
were nothing particular, really, no special events). The human brain is such a
fascinating thing.

------
trumbitta2
My earliest memory it's me in the high chair (seggiolone, in italian) at age
1.5, doing that game of the plane which is a spoon with food.

After that, all dark until age 2 with a lot - a lot - of kindergarden memories
and so on till yesterday.

Always thought it was the norm.

------
legohead
My 5 year old daughter has great memory and recollection of her entire
childhood, reminding us of things we had forgotten about when she was 2, 3,
etc.

I thought it was remarkable, since I can't recall any of my own memories from
younger than 10 years old.

------
zw123456
Any Study that claims to know what someone remembers to thinks is inherently
unreliable and has a potential for falsehood. Until mind reading is perfected,
there is just know way to test what someone else is thinking for sure.

------
mathattack
What about forgetting your 20s? I can barely remember what I used to eat
before I learned how to cook. I assume that it was a lot of macaroni and
cheese, pasta and mashed potatoes, but I can't really remember.

~~~
Paul_S
You're not alone. It annoys me a bit when people reminisce about their
childhood and say things like "do you remember when" because I don't remember
any of mine. In fact I don't remember my teens and come to think of it my uni
seems a bit foggy.

Any memories from highschool and such I know for a fact are second hand so I
suspect maybe some people don't realise this - I'm more willing to believe in
how easily we make false memories. I remember things as told to me by others
even if they told me about it long ago. Riddle me that. I don't have amnesia,
learning difficulties etc. Maybe I should keep a diary but it's a bit late for
that.

~~~
gmaslov
Don't worry -- it just means your brain's eviction policy is well-tuned for
immortality. ;)

~~~
Paul_S
I hope my brain is putting all those reclaimed neurons to good use then but
it's probably just storing pins and passwords which I remember for decades
after not needing them any more. Wish I could talk to the bit of the brain
that decides what should be kept.

------
jbverschoor
I recall very very little specific memories before 12 even. I know flashes...

------
jhallenworld
Heh, I think some significant memories can be retained. I know that my 4 year
old son will forever remember what happens when you play with a loaded mouse
trap.

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kimonos
I have little memories when I was below five and I can still remember how I
felt during those times. Thanks for posting this! Great info!

