Childhood Amnesia Theoretical Explanations Childhood amnesia, or better known as infantile amnesia, has been a phenomenon yet to be unraveled by scientists as early as the mid-1800s. This phenomenon occurs when adults, depending on the individual, fail to recall early childhood memories as early as 2-3 years of age. Sigmund Freud along with many others have tried to piece together what may be the cause of infantile amnesia. This ranges from repressed memories of early childhood to inability of free recall due to underdevelopment of the child brain. However, while Freud’s theory is one of the more popular ones, it has been dismissed due to little to no empirical evidence supporting Freud’s statement. First, let’s look at Freud’s explanation
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As children grow and learn about the rules and norm of society, such wishful fulfillment becomes disgusting, vulgar, and inappropriate… Rather than acknowledging such incestuous thoughts, our subconscious “blocks” all access to the first 5-6 years of our lives” (Bennett L. Schwartz, 2014, Memory Foundations and Applications, 2nd Edition, page 201-202”). Obviously, there has never been any empirical data to support the statements and has been passed off as completely fictional and almost ridiculous to say the least. Over time, people reported memories from early ages, but with a likelihood that they may be false memories, or stories told over time by their parents and others. While they may not be true episodic memories, there is one explanation in which it is possible to be able to recall a memory from early childhood, so long as there is a significant factor attached. The following paragraph will review over an explanation based on research from Eacott and Crawler and how children may remember at an early age the birth of a younger …show more content…
One of the earliest and potentially the first experiment to test this was conducted by Sheingold and Tenney (1982) in which they had asked university students a series of questions about the birth of a sibling (Gross, Jack, Davis, & Hayne, 2013 Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand). Students reported almost no memory of their sibling’s birth; however, students that were 4 and over were able to recall the birth of the sibling and with a substantial amount of information (Gross, et al., 2013). Sheingold and Tenney (1982) concluded that childhood amnesia ended by the ages of 3 and 4 years of age. Unfortunately, the approach of using a target-event method resulted in its disadvantages, one of which comes from the universal questions that are commonly asked request details that participants may have been unlikely to take note of in the first place (e.g. “What time of day was it when they [your mother and the baby] came home?”) (Gross, et al., 2013). In 1998, Eacott and Crawley conducted a replication of Usher and Neisser’s experiment (1993) which concluded with more results that children would be able to remember something as significant as the birth of a younger sibling, prior to age 3. Eacott and Crawler created additional controls in which they were to only look
As children grow and learn about the rules and norm of society, such wishful fulfillment becomes disgusting, vulgar, and inappropriate… Rather than acknowledging such incestuous thoughts, our subconscious “blocks” all access to the first 5-6 years of our lives” (Bennett L. Schwartz, 2014, Memory Foundations and Applications, 2nd Edition, page 201-202”). Obviously, there has never been any empirical data to support the statements and has been passed off as completely fictional and almost ridiculous to say the least. Over time, people reported memories from early ages, but with a likelihood that they may be false memories, or stories told over time by their parents and others. While they may not be true episodic memories, there is one explanation in which it is possible to be able to recall a memory from early childhood, so long as there is a significant factor attached. The following paragraph will review over an explanation based on research from Eacott and Crawler and how children may remember at an early age the birth of a younger …show more content…
One of the earliest and potentially the first experiment to test this was conducted by Sheingold and Tenney (1982) in which they had asked university students a series of questions about the birth of a sibling (Gross, Jack, Davis, & Hayne, 2013 Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand). Students reported almost no memory of their sibling’s birth; however, students that were 4 and over were able to recall the birth of the sibling and with a substantial amount of information (Gross, et al., 2013). Sheingold and Tenney (1982) concluded that childhood amnesia ended by the ages of 3 and 4 years of age. Unfortunately, the approach of using a target-event method resulted in its disadvantages, one of which comes from the universal questions that are commonly asked request details that participants may have been unlikely to take note of in the first place (e.g. “What time of day was it when they [your mother and the baby] came home?”) (Gross, et al., 2013). In 1998, Eacott and Crawley conducted a replication of Usher and Neisser’s experiment (1993) which concluded with more results that children would be able to remember something as significant as the birth of a younger sibling, prior to age 3. Eacott and Crawler created additional controls in which they were to only look