Childhood memory

Childhood memory refers to memories formed during childhood. Among its other roles, memory functions to guide present behaviour and to predict future outcomes. Memory in childhood is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the memories formed and retrieved in late adolescence and the adult years. Childhood memory research is relatively recent in relation to the study of other types of cognitive processes underpinning behaviour. Understanding the mechanisms by which memories in childhood are encoded and later retrieved has important implications in many areas. Research into childhood memory includes topics such as childhood memory formation and retrieval mechanisms in relation to those in adults, controversies surrounding infantile amnesia and the fact that adults have relatively poor memories of early childhood, the ways in which school environment and family environment influence memory, and the ways in which memory can be improved in childhood to improve overall cognition, performance in school, and well-being, both in childhood and in adulthood. Childhood memory refers to memories formed during childhood. Among its other roles, memory functions to guide present behaviour and to predict future outcomes. Memory in childhood is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the memories formed and retrieved in late adolescence and the adult years. Childhood memory research is relatively recent in relation to the study of other types of cognitive processes underpinning behaviour. Understanding the mechanisms by which memories in childhood are encoded and later retrieved has important implications in many areas. Research into childhood memory includes topics such as childhood memory formation and retrieval mechanisms in relation to those in adults, controversies surrounding infantile amnesia and the fact that adults have relatively poor memories of early childhood, the ways in which school environment and family environment influence memory, and the ways in which memory can be improved in childhood to improve overall cognition, performance in school, and well-being, both in childhood and in adulthood. Childhood memories have several unique qualities. The experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Endel Tulving refers to memory as “mental time travel”, a process unique to humans. However, early memories are notoriously sparse from the perspective of an adult trying to recall his or her childhood in depth. Explicit knowledge of the world is a form of declarative memory, which can be broken down further into semantic memory, and episodic memory, which encompasses both autobiographical memory and event memory. Most people have no memory prior to three years of age, and few memories between three and six years of age, as verified by analysis of the forgetting curve in adults recalling childhood memories. Childhood memory research is relatively recent, having gained significant amounts of scientific interest within the last two decades. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the mechanisms underpinning childhood memory. Until relatively recently, it was thought that children have only a very general memory and that “overwrite mechanisms” prevented the later retrieval of early memories. Newer research suggests that very young children do remember novel events, and these events can be recalled in detail from as young as two and a half years old. Previous research presupposed that children remember pieces of information from specific events but generally do not keep episodic memories. Contrary to previous research, newer research has shown that children can recall specific episodic memories for up to two years prior to the onset of the earliest autobiographical memories reported by adults. The same research argues against the Freudian theory that early memories are repressed because of negative affective content. Another older hypothesis that has been thrown into question is that of the prominent psychologists Daniel Schacter (1974) and Ulrich Neisser (1962), who hypothesized that memories are forgotten because cognitive schemas change between childhood and adulthood, meaning that information is lost with an adult's reconstruction of childhood events because present (adult) schemas are not suitable. Schemas change drastically around age six due to socialization and language development. However, this theory has received criticism. Recent data suggest that a preschooler's schemas are not dramatically different from the older child's or the adult's, meaning that the ways of representing and interpreting reality do not change markedly from childhood to adulthood. Tests of very young children and adults show that in all age groups, memory recall shows the same sequential cause-and-effect pattern. One interpretation is that childhood memories differ from adult memories mainly in what is noticed: an adult and a child experiencing an event both notice different aspects of the event, and will have different memories of the same event. For example, a child may not show remarkable memory for events that an adult would see as truly novel, such as the birth of a sibling, or a plane trip to visit relatives. Conversely, children show stronger memories for aspects of experiences that adults find unremarkable. Therefore, the schematic organization hypothesis of childhood amnesia may be inadequate to explain what is remembered and later recalled. Another theory that has gained attention is the social interaction model of autobiographical memory development, or the means by which social interaction influences ability to remember specific events in the context of a life narrative. The social interaction model describes the way in which a child develops the ability to construct memories as narratives when the child has the opportunity to discuss events with others, such as parents. Parenting style is highly relevant to this theory. For example, different parents will ask different numbers of memory-relevant questions, will try to elicit different types of memory, and will frame the discussions in different ways. Nelson (1992) describes two different parenting styles: pragmatic and elaborative. Pragmatic mothers use primarily instrumental instructions that are relevant to a task the child is performing, whereas elaborative mothers construct narratives with the child about what they and the child did together. An elaborative style yields more detailed memories of events. The same researcher who found these results also made reference to Tessler's studies (1986, 1991) of memory for events in childhood. In these studies, children were taken on a trip to a museum. A week later, aspects of the trip and items that were seen in the museum were only recalled if they had been discussed at the time of the trip. Items that were not talked about were not recalled. Although previous hypotheses have suggested that the role of the memory talk is active rehearsal, newer research suggests that its role might be reinstatement. In the context of infant memory studies, a learned response (example: playing with a mobile) that would otherwise be forgotten can be reinstated if the context is re-presented within a given time period. In this sense, verbal rehearsal of events between a child and a family member might serve to reinstate the cognitive context of the original event. The types of childhood memories that an adult recalls may be linked to personality. Research into memory in both children and adults reminiscing about childhood memories is not well-established, but considerable attention has been devoted to assessing the validity of strategies that can be used to recall early memories, particularly in situations where the accuracy of recall is critical, such as reports of child abuse. Some people claim to have vivid memories from very early ages, while others remember life events beginning around age five. Variables that affect age of first childhood memory include early family environments. One such factor is maternal reminiscing style. There is a long-lasting improvement in autobiographical memory in children whose mothers used an elaborative style of conversation after experiencing an event with the child. Autobiographical memory improves with age along with semantic knowledge of the world and ability to construct a coherent life narrative, but age and gender may influence ability to recall early memories. One study found that older adolescents and females perform better on both episodic autobiographical memory and memory for everyday events, given that females tend to provide more emotional, accurate, vivid, and detailed recollections, although conditions of high retrieval support (probing questions) reduced this sex difference. The accuracy of recalled childhood memories in adulthood is the subject of extensive research and debate. Controversies exist surrounding the authenticity of recovered memories, particularly in the context of child abuse or trauma, such as the debatable accuracy of the spontaneous recovery of distressing memories that were previously forgotten due to inhibitory control. Because memory is reconstructive, false memories may be recalled. Errors might be made even with authentic memories when the adult has to infer missing details, is given inadequate retrieval cues, or recalls inaccurate details due to the power of suggestion from a therapist. Cognitive abilities, personality, interactions with the therapist, and genetic differences also play a role in the types of memories that an adult recalls and how accurate these memories are. Different memory retrieval tasks involve different cognitive mechanisms. According to dual-coding theory, recognition of a memory stimulus can be studied via two cognitive mechanisms: recollection and familiarity. Familiarity is context-free, or independent of the context in which the stimulus was encoded, and concerns whether a person 'knows' they have encountered a stimulus previously. Recollection is context-dependent on the details incidental to encoding of a target memory, and is related to the cognitive feeling of 'remembering' something. Within the medial temporal lobe, familiarity tends to be associated with the perirhinal region while recollection is associated with the hippocampus. Cortical regions related to conscious recollections (feelings of 'time travel' according to Tulving) include the frontal lobes, while unconscious feelings of 'knowing' may be located elsewhere. Dissociation of recollection vs. familiarity has already been seen in 7-8 year-old children as they grow to adolescence.