LIFE must be brilliant as a baby: being nourished and dressed and transported places in soft sachets, to be agitated and smiled by worshiping strangers, to have the temerity of screaming because the food has not arrived quickly enough, Then throw it on the ground when it is moved. It is a shame that none of us recall exactly how much we had it.
At Christmas, I looked at my daughter, already in a way a young child, passing between her grandfathers and I thought, with nostalgia: she will not remember any of this. In the parks, I constantly push it on the swings, making a small conversation with other parents who have been drawn in the Sisyphean servitude, and think, with regret: Why Will it not remember all this?
In 1905, Sigmund Freud invented the term “infantile amnesia”, referring to “particular amnesia which, in the case of most people, but in no case hides the first beginnings of their childhood”. More than a century later, psychologists are still intrigued by the reasons why we do not remember our first experiences.
“Most adults have no memories before the age of two to three,” said Professor Qi Wang at Cornell University. Until about seven years, childhood memories are generally uneven.
Until relatively recently, researchers thought that young brains were not sufficiently developed to form lasting memories. But studies in the 1980s have shown that toddlers as young as two can form memories and recall events of several months earlier. Exhibition at Early childhood trauma is also well documented to increase the risk of subsequent anxiety and depression. The paradox of infantile amnesia, known as Cristina Alberini, professor of neural science at New York University, is “how is it that these experiences affect our life forever if they are forgotten?”
Alberini research In animals, noted that memories formed during the period of infantile amnesia are, in fact, stored in the brain until adulthood, even if they do not consciously remember. In adult animals and humans, the training and storage of long -term memories on their life experiences is not possible without a region of the brain known as hippocampus. Alberini work has shown that the region is also important in the first memories and suggests that infantile amnesia occurs due to a critical period when the hippocampus is developing due to new experiences. “It makes sense with all the literature of the trauma,” she says. “If children learn difficult situations in early childhood, they may not remember details, but their brain will be shaped according to this experience.”
Why the maori memories emerge earlier
Different experiences can also explain why the age at which people recall their first memories varies considerably. Wang, an expert in the way culture affects autobiographical memory, has shown that the The first memories of the Americans date from an age of about 3.5 years, almost six months less than in the Chinese. American memories tended to be more self-foster and emotionally elaborate, while Chinese memories tended to focus on collective activities and general routines, she found.
“In the Asian context, identity and sense of oneself are less defined by being unique, but (more) of your roles and your relationship with others,” explains Wang. To this end, memories can be less important to define identity than to clarify behavior and transmit lessons. “If you want to use memory to build a unique feeling of identity, you probably remember many idiosyncratic details,” explains Wang.
Another explanation of the gap seems to be the way parents discuss past experiences with their children. In Mari-Zealander, the first memories emerge earlier that in those of European origin, at around 2.5 years old. Professor Elaine Reese at the University of Otago, who studies autobiographical memory in children and adolescents, underlines a strong accent on oral traditions in Maori culture but also Developed conversations Remembering past events.
Reese followed groups of children, toddlers in adolescence, noting that individuals who had richer narrative environments in childhood could remember First previous and more detailed memories as adolescents. This was the case for children whose mothers asked open questions and were more detailed when they were talking about Shared past experiencesas well as the children who grew up Expanded family households.
“We know that from the time (children) are, say, babies of six months, they are capable of a kind of mental imagery of something that happened from the day or the previous week, ”explains Reese. “You have to take this mental image and describe it with words which, I think, is so important to help them keep this memory during a lifetime.”
After promoting the newsletter
Ironically, for parental influencers who publish a vacation developed in the name of Create “basic memories”The first events that children keep can be surprisingly trivial – “things that most parents would never remember elaborate,” said Reese. “The classic example of my own research is a child who remembers having seen a worm on the path once.”
There is a debate between experts in memory as to the role of language in infantile amnesia. Human researchers suggest that memories can be limited by an inability to give language to the first experiences. “But there must be something more fundamental that also plays a role because we see this same effect (infantile amnesia) in non-linguistic animals such as rats,” explains Professor Rick Richardson of the University of New South Wales.
“Improbably early”
The brain establishes non -discreet memories as on a computer but like neural networks through the brain. Recall an active memory of these networks and strengthens the links between neurons. This does not mean that memory is stable: “Whenever you revisit a memory and think about it, you change it,” explains Reese.
Repeated suggestions can lead people to create images and form false memoriesSaid Wang, citing a famous case to Jean Piaget, the influential psychologist for the development of the child. Piaget had a clear memory that her nanny fighting a potential kidnapper at the age of two – but years later, she admitted that she had made history.
In a 2018 survey39% of respondents said their first memories had occurred at the age of two or less. Researchers suggested that “improbably early” memories, such as memories of being pushed into a pram or walking for the first time, were probably fictitious and based on photographs or family stories. But although memory is malleable and young children are more suggestible, “confabulation is not so common,” says Wang. “Under normal conditions, even children do not only take it for granted what you tell them and incorporate these memories.”
So, if the experiences of our first milestones – first anniversary, first steps, first trip to the beach – seem to be hidden somewhere in the brain, why cannot we consciously access it? Although psychologists say that it can be adaptive to forget, this does not explain why memories trained before the age of seven seem to be decomposed more quickly than when we are adults. Alberini hypothes according to which the first memories not obtained can work as patterns on which adult memories are built. Like the foundations of a house, they remain hidden but crucial.