child amnesia tutorial Flashcards
(19 cards)
what is infantile amnesia?
Phenomenon that older children and
adults are unable to recall many long-
term autobiographic memories from
infancy and early childhood
when do most people start to have memories of childhood?
age 5
How well do children aged 1–3 remember the birth of a sibling?
Very poorly — they show almost no recall.
What age range shows a significant improvement in memory recall of a sibling’s birth?
Around 3–5 years old.
How does memory recall change as children get older?
It improves steadily; older children remember more details.
What does this study suggest about early childhood memory?
Very young children (under 3) experience infantile amnesia and cannot form lasting autobiographical memories.
What age group has the highest recall of a sibling’s birth?
Children who were over 9 years old at the time.
What does this evidence suggest about cognitive development?
Long-term autobiographical memory becomes more reliable with age as brain and language development improve.
Memory format
change hypothesis
Format of memories may change with increasing age (from more non-verbal to more verbal), making early memories inaccessible later in life.
neural change hypothesis
Immature brain areas (e.g. hippocampus) are unable to store memories very wel
Cueing hypothesis
Early memories are accessible, but only with non-verbal
cues similar to the original memory. Memories
encoded with language are easier to cue later in life.
Cueing hypothesis
What age group was studied to explore early memory development?
Children aged 27, 33, and 39 months (just over 2–3 years old).
What kind of event were children exposed to in the study?
A unique and memorable event involving a “magic shrinking machine.”
After a delay, how did researchers test the children’s memory?
Through verbal recall (describing the event) and non-verbal recall (using gestures or reenacting it).
What type of memory did even the youngest children show?
Non-verbal memory—they could remember and act out the event.
Which memory ability improved most clearly with age?
Verbal recall—older children were better able to describe the event in words.
Why couldn’t the youngest children verbally describe the event later?
Because they didn’t have the language skills at the time the memory was formed.
What does the study reveal about early childhood memory?
Children may remember events but lack the words to describe them unless they had the right vocabulary when it happened.
How does this study help explain infantile amnesia?
It shows that early memories may exist but can’t be verbally retrieved if they weren’t encoded with language.
