Abstract
Infantile amnesia is a topic that raises many questions. Early memories are scarce, usually beginning after the age of two. So why do we not remember anything as infants? Some say time is a factor, some say the brains ability to encode memories is not present due to the lack of verbal encoding, and others simply state that the memory system is not fully developed yet. Studies have risen looking for information about infants’ memory system and whether they remember anything at all. Many of these studies have found that infants do, indeed, remember things. Auditory memory and visual memory in specific were tested among infants under the age of twenty-four months and have found that these infants recognize previously learned melodies …show more content…
Long term memory of music is present among adults, but can it be present among infants as well? Can an infant remember a melody he/she heard weeks, even months ago? Trainor set to figure this out. Sixteen six month old children (ten female and six male) participated. Digital recordings of two sets of English folk song were used (Country Lass and Painful Plough) with one piano and one harp for each set. The two songs were distinct in rhythm but were similar among all other aspects. Four children were introduced to Country Lass in piano, four to Country Lass in harp, four to Painful Plough in piano, and four to Painful Plough in harp. They listened to their assigned piece for three minutes a day for seven days straight, and on the eighth day, the children were brought to the lab. In the lab, the child was measured on the amount of time they focused on the area the music was being played from. Each trial ended when the infant looked away for at least two seconds. The next trial occurred then including the next melody. Each melody was played five times for each child, and each time was recorded for each melody. Twenty trials were conducted per child and measure of preference of melody was relative to the amount of time they spent listening to the melody. Findings include that children listened longer to melodies they were unfamiliar with, indicating that they remembered the familiarized melody. Infants do actually store melodies in their long term …show more content…
Nelson set forth in 1980 to discover exactly why infantile amnesia occurs. They look at different age groups in children and try to find a pattern, hypothesizing that older children will have a much easier time remembering than younger children, even when the age difference is as small as a couple of months due to the fact that verbal encoding of memories is much more difficult for younger children with less verbal abilities. The study consisted of nineteen toddles (10 female and nine male) ranging from twenty-one months old to twenty-four months old. Mothers of the children kept records with specific instructions and questions to answer for the child’s memory. They recorded an average of six memories over a three month period. Memories were divided into five different categories: (1) recognition or recall of a specific event that occurred, (2) recall of a specific location of an object, (3) a cue which triggered the child’s memory, (4) novel memories that the child specifically did, or (5) recurrent memories. These recordings showed us that forty percent of all the memories recalled were from the first category, an aspect from an event, with over seventy percent of these children being older than twenty-four months. Young children, however, seem to remember things that have to do with objects and their surroundings. Age does seem to be a factor here. Forty percent of memories recalled occurred between one and three
Infantile amnesia is a topic that raises many questions. Early memories are scarce, usually beginning after the age of two. So why do we not remember anything as infants? Some say time is a factor, some say the brains ability to encode memories is not present due to the lack of verbal encoding, and others simply state that the memory system is not fully developed yet. Studies have risen looking for information about infants’ memory system and whether they remember anything at all. Many of these studies have found that infants do, indeed, remember things. Auditory memory and visual memory in specific were tested among infants under the age of twenty-four months and have found that these infants recognize previously learned melodies …show more content…
Long term memory of music is present among adults, but can it be present among infants as well? Can an infant remember a melody he/she heard weeks, even months ago? Trainor set to figure this out. Sixteen six month old children (ten female and six male) participated. Digital recordings of two sets of English folk song were used (Country Lass and Painful Plough) with one piano and one harp for each set. The two songs were distinct in rhythm but were similar among all other aspects. Four children were introduced to Country Lass in piano, four to Country Lass in harp, four to Painful Plough in piano, and four to Painful Plough in harp. They listened to their assigned piece for three minutes a day for seven days straight, and on the eighth day, the children were brought to the lab. In the lab, the child was measured on the amount of time they focused on the area the music was being played from. Each trial ended when the infant looked away for at least two seconds. The next trial occurred then including the next melody. Each melody was played five times for each child, and each time was recorded for each melody. Twenty trials were conducted per child and measure of preference of melody was relative to the amount of time they spent listening to the melody. Findings include that children listened longer to melodies they were unfamiliar with, indicating that they remembered the familiarized melody. Infants do actually store melodies in their long term …show more content…
Nelson set forth in 1980 to discover exactly why infantile amnesia occurs. They look at different age groups in children and try to find a pattern, hypothesizing that older children will have a much easier time remembering than younger children, even when the age difference is as small as a couple of months due to the fact that verbal encoding of memories is much more difficult for younger children with less verbal abilities. The study consisted of nineteen toddles (10 female and nine male) ranging from twenty-one months old to twenty-four months old. Mothers of the children kept records with specific instructions and questions to answer for the child’s memory. They recorded an average of six memories over a three month period. Memories were divided into five different categories: (1) recognition or recall of a specific event that occurred, (2) recall of a specific location of an object, (3) a cue which triggered the child’s memory, (4) novel memories that the child specifically did, or (5) recurrent memories. These recordings showed us that forty percent of all the memories recalled were from the first category, an aspect from an event, with over seventy percent of these children being older than twenty-four months. Young children, however, seem to remember things that have to do with objects and their surroundings. Age does seem to be a factor here. Forty percent of memories recalled occurred between one and three