Can you tell us about what happened to you in early childhood? What is your earliest memory and how old were you then? It is worth noting that most people only have difficulty remembering small excerpts from early in their childhood, such as when they were around three, four or five years old. What is this connected with and why do we not remember ourselves when we were still very young children? In this article we will try to find answers to this question.
Shelley Macdonald Research
In one of her studies, Shelley McDonald (a psychologist from New Zealand) decided to find out why children do not remember themselves well in childhood and what exactly this depends on. To do this, she conducted an experiment in which New Zealanders participated of various origins(European and Asian), including representatives of the country's indigenous population - the Maori tribes. As a result, it was possible to find out that representatives of Asian countries remember their childhood the most poorly, because on average, the first memories of their childhood in this group appear only after four and a half years.
People from European countries. Most of them were able to remember some life episodes starting from the age of three and a half. But best memory in this regard, representatives of the Maori tribes had. It turned out that on average they can talk about individual situations, which happened to them when they were still two and a half years old.
Psychologist Shelley MacDonald explained this by the fact that the indigenous people of New Zealand have a very rich oral culture, the peculiarity of which is to create an emphasis on events that took place in the past. Representatives of the Maori tribes pay a lot of attention to past events, which certainly affects the emotional situation in the family in which small children grow up.
Stress and communication with relatives
Similar studies were carried out in other parts of the world. For example, Italian psychologist Federica Artioli conducted a number of studies in which residents of Italy took part. She managed to find out that those participants in the experiment who lived in large families with grandparents, aunts and uncles can tell much more about what happened to them in early childhood than those who were raised only by their father and mother.
At the same time, the most vivid memories of that period are interesting stories and the tales that their parents told them and immediate family. In addition, stress can also affect memory formation. After all, children whose parents divorced when they were not yet six years old remember their early childhood much better.
What could be the reason?
ABOUT exact reasons Scientists and psychologists still argue about poor memory in children. Some believe that this is a consequence quick perception information that a child “absorbs like a sponge” in the first years. As a result, newer memories are “overwritten” in our memory on top of older ones. Others explain it insufficient level memory development in young children. Interesting theory Sigmund Freud also proposed it, describing it in his work “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.” He proposed a term such as “infantile amnesia.” In his opinion, this is precisely the reason for the lack of clear memories of the first years of our lives.
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Why don't we remember our dreams? This is also strange because dreams can be much more vivid and intense than everyday life. If some of the events that happen in a dream happened to us in reality - for example, falling from a roof or a romantic relationship with a movie star - this story would definitely remain in our memory (not to mention our social media feed).
There are several theories that help understand why dreams fade from memory so quickly. On the one hand, forgetting is a process that is extremely necessary from the point of view of evolution: for caveman a dream that he jumped off a cliff while running away from a lion would not have ended well. Other evolutionary theory, developed by DNA discoverer Francis Crick, states: main function dreams - forgetting unnecessary memories that accumulate in the brain over time.
We also forget dreams because it is unusual for us to remember what happened in the dream. We are accustomed to the fact that our past is organized chronologically, linearly: first one thing happened, then another, a third... Dreams are chaotic, full of associations and random, illogical turns.
In addition, everyday life, the need to get up on an alarm clock and immediately rush to do things does not contribute to remembering dreams - the first thing we think about (if we think at all) after waking up is: “Where to start, what should I do today?” Because of this, dreams dissipate like smoke.
What to do to remember a dream?
Before you go to bed, set two alarms: one to finally wake up, the other (musical) to focus on what you saw in your dream (the second should ring a little earlier than the first).
- Before going to bed, place a pen and a piece of paper on the nightstand near your bed. Or use the application " Notebook» on your smartphone: write down everything you remember before you forget.
- When the “musical” alarm clock rings and you reach for paper and pencil, try to move as little as possible.
- Remember the feeling of the dream, its mood, write down what comes to mind. Do it in a free form, do not give events a sequence.
- Keep a notepad nearby throughout the day: perhaps sleep will continue to “flirt” with us. Flirting dreams is a term coined by Arthur Mindell: dream shards can appear throughout the day or even several days, “teasing” us and our brain.
- Once you learn to replay your dreams, it will be much easier for you to remember them.
Usually (and it’s good if this is so) people’s earliest memories are associated with the age of 3 years, sometimes 2. But people don’t remember how we were born, how we drove home from the maternity hospital, where the baby was placed, etc.
Of course, people don’t remember what happened before birth, how conception happened, the development of the fetus, what happened before conception, what happened between lives, past lives.
Why can't we remember this and is it possible to regain the memory of early events and past lives? Yes, you can. For example, I remember, I know a number of my past lives, and a couple of my earliest memories are the appearance of the first life on earth and the cataclysm (change, event), as a result of which the cosmos became what it is now - dead. Before this, space itself was alive...
But you can remember, and this is easy, recent past lives. For example, almost everyone (who is under 40) has a memory of the 2nd World War. Why is this memory blocked? Because energetically it “lies” outside our current personality. How so?
It's simple. There is a body in energy; it can be called the middle one. Which is formed during our life. This body is formed by all other energy bodies - both “superior” and “lower”. And also not energetic manifestations of the human psyche. And of course, the environment, society, etc. I described how it all works and works in my book, but the essence of this article was not included in the book, but I want to tell you.
So this “middle” or “resulting” energy body is usually called the astral. It contains everything that we consider ourselves to be. current life. All our experiences, knowledge, skills... Everything.
In fairness, it is worth clarifying that what applies to other bodies and beings of the psyche is duplicated in these other components of a person. However, in those bodies and beings, the current life occupies a tiny space. And in the astral there is nothing that does not relate to current life. That is, there is no “default”, and without special classes or the intervention of “fate” does not appear. And our ordinary consciousness is associated precisely with this energy body.
Since it is formed from the experience of our life, it has not yet accumulated enough personal experience, we can say that there is no personality yet. It’s worth mentioning right away that there is a personality, for there is a soul and much more, but it is the astral consciousness as an independent unit that is formed a little earlier than our earliest memories. Therefore, it is precisely our usual waking consciousness that does not yet exist until the age of approximately 3 years.
Further binding of consciousness to this energy body is carried out in the process of socialization and life in physical world with its most powerful material and emotional signals.
And since the astral body was formed in this life, there is nothing in it from other lives and from the period when the astral body was not yet sufficiently developed. And we, of course, cannot access missing data.
And for example, Castaneda’s first attention is precisely located in this body. And the second attention is the whole other energy world.
After death, this body disintegrates within 40 days. Of course, this is not the soul of a person, not his real personality. This is a set of automatisms. That's all. Although there widest spectrum These automatisms are all our experiences, all our skills and abilities.
Do you want to distinguish “simple” schools of magic from more advanced ones? Very simple. the main objective“simple” magicians - to extend the existence of the astral body for more than 40 days after death, or at least “imprint” their astral body into the energy of a baby (child under 3 years old) before the expiration of 40 days. This is the main goal of magicians who cannot and do not know how to make their astral body “not disintegrate” in order to exist as an energy being independent of the body.
I immediately want to calm everyone down. All these things - with the imprinting of the formed energy and so on - happen solely according to the desire and plan of the soul of the baby (or no longer a baby). If the soul does not need it, no amount of energy can do anything. Therefore, live and do not be afraid of anything!
What about the memory of past lives?
It's both simple and complex. Simple, because you just need to shift your attention beyond the first attention. It is not difficult. For example, to the nearest immortal energy body. That is, to the buddhic. Or to the energy of the body or to... but this is beyond the scope of this article.
Remember Castaneda's concept of "gatekeeper"? So this is precisely the switching of attention from astral perception to others energy bodies. Usually this opens the memory of the buddhic body (not all at once). At the same time, a person remembers differently. At the same time, memories are brighter and clearer than data from the physical senses. Much! Compared to them, even excellent vision produces a cloudy, blurry and twitchy (due to eye movements) picture.
Such a memory unfolds sequentially, like a re-experience. That is, not something vague that seemed to be like this, but precisely as a full-fledged sequential re-experience of events of amazing clarity and brightness. For this type of memory, there is no concept of “forgot” or “can’t remember.” Remembering a newspaper, you can not only clearly see the letters, but also see the texture of the paper, lint, etc. in the smallest detail...
There are also unusual ways working with such memory. You can, remembering how you drove to work, go out on the road vehicle and visit another place and find out what happened there when you were driving to work... There are others interesting opportunities...
Entry into the egg intrauterine development, birth, first days of life
“The lesson started with... I had a little headache in the temple area... see you big eyes dragonflies on the sides of the head... this structure did not disappear, but was completely drawn into another vortex - a funnel, with a diameter at the beginning of 8 cm. At the same time, there was an obsessive sound in my memory “v-sch-sch-sch” - as if something was being sucked in .
I became dark gray inside this funnel. I was at the beginning, and towards the end, it narrowed and seemed to dissolve, and then there was light. I had seen such light before, and now, as then, I felt a feeling of complete happiness.
I began to move towards the light, the funnel was left behind, I moved further in this light. Further and further, and the light began to thicken, became more and more whitish, and enveloped me. I continued to move and suddenly found myself as a dense large ball of matter. And strong tactile sensations came
sensations: feeling like a bursting ball and at the same time as if something was pressing on him. This is very unpleasant feeling I often had it in childhood during illnesses (frequent sore throats, flu, colds). For me, flying in the light and experiencing happiness, it was new and super stressful
state.
I remained in this state for 5-7 minutes. This is a very long time, because as a child I experienced it for several seconds. And then this unpleasant state went away by itself. I was still a ball, but I was comfortable. The I-ball began to grow and felt that nothing was pressing anymore. Then I saw a picture as if I was touching with my hand something soft and plastic in front of me at a short distance, and I, who was there, liked it and made me laugh. I ran my hand over this plastic thing several times and then decided to try it with my foot. The field of view was small - I could only see in front of me. It was light gray and cloudy-opaque.
Then the feeling came that I had grown up, and what was then in front of me at a distance began to put pressure on me, and I resisted it. I felt as if my legs and head were bent, and I was resting the back of my head, neck and back against it, and it was tight and unpleasant. The feeling of confusion was replaced by the thought that I could come out of this forward, and then I saw a light ahead, and it was as if I had been taken out of there, and my body felt either coolness or wetness.
I felt funny... the people I saw in this room, I knew that they perceived me differently, but I understood, realized and felt everything.
Then I felt that I was lying straight, my arms straight, a little tight and uncomfortable. I see how the white walls and ceiling converge in the corner. And there came a feeling that everything around was simple, very simple and uninteresting. There is no magic that I vaguely remembered. It’s as if it was “magical” before, but here everything is “simple”. And I felt like I could scream. It was nice to feel the scream coming out, to feel the throat or ligaments. Then I realized that they were giving me something liquid. It flows pleasantly through the esophagus and fills the stomach (I clearly felt them). I closed my eyes and felt drowsy, and it was pleasant. I physically felt it in the area around the eyes and temples, and was aware of it and enjoyed it.
Our childhood. Looking at the children from the neighboring yard, you understand that this is the most carefree time in the life of every person. However, memories of our childhood or birth are not available to us. What is this mystery connected with? Why shouldn't we remember ourselves in our childhood years? What is hidden behind this gap in our memory? And then at some point a thought suddenly flashed, why don't we remember ourselves from birth, forces us to delve into the mysteries of the unknown.
Why don't we remember our birth
It would seem like this important point, like birth, should have been imprinted on our brains forever. But no, some bright events from past life sometimes they pop up in the subconscious, and most importantly, they are forever erased from memory. No wonder that the best minds Psychology, physiology and the religious sphere are trying to understand such an interesting fact.
Erasing memory from a mystical point of view
Researchers studying the unknown mystical side of the existence of our universe and Supreme Intelligence, give their answers to the questions of why parts of a person’s memory erase the ability to reproduce the birth process.
The main emphasis is on the Soul. It contains information about:
- lived periods of life,
- emotional experiences,
- achievements and failures.
Why don't we remember how we were born?
WITH physical point It is not possible for a person to understand the soul and decipher the facts stored in it.
It is assumed that this substance visits the formed embryo on the tenth day of its existence. But she does not settle there forever, but leaves him for a while, only to return a month and a half before the birth.
Scientific background
But we do not have the opportunity to remember a very important moment in our lives. This happens due to the fact that the soul does not want to “share” with the body the information that it itself possesses. A bundle of energy protects our brain from unnecessary data. Most likely, the process of creating a human embryo is too mysterious to be solved. The external universe uses the body only as an external shell, while the soul is immortal.
Man is born in pain
Why do we not remember how we were born into this world? Accurate evidence of this phenomenon has not been obtained. There are only assumptions that the extreme stress experienced at birth is to blame. A child from the warm mother’s womb climbs out through the birth canal into a world unknown to him. In the process, he experiences pain due to the changing structure of his body parts.
Height human body directly related to the formation of memory. An adult remembers the most outstanding moments in his life and places them in the “storage” compartment of his brain.
For children, everything happens a little differently.
- Positive and negative points and events are deposited in the “subcortex” of their consciousness, but at the same time they destroy the memories existing there.
- A child's brain is not yet developed enough to store large amounts of information.
- That is why we do not remember ourselves from birth and do not store childhood memories.
What do we remember from childhood
Children's memory develops from 6 months to 1.5 years. But even then it is divided into long-term and short-term. The child recognizes the people around him, can switch to this or that object, and knows how to navigate the apartment.
Another scientific guess why we completely forgot the process of appearing in this world is due to ignorance of words.
The baby does not speak, cannot compare current events and facts, or correctly describe what he saw. Infantile amnesia is the name given to the absence of childhood memories by psychologists.
Scientists express their guesses about this problem. They believe that children choose short term memory. And this has nothing to do with a lack of ability to create memories. Any person not only cannot tell how his birth happened, but the passage of time makes him forget other important bright moments of his life in a certain period.
There are two main scientific theories who are trying to understand this difficult issue.
| Name | Description |
| Freud's theory | The world famous Freud, who promoted important changes in the fields of medicine and psychology, had his own views on the lack of childhood memories.
In other words, a girl at an early age is strongly attached to her father and experiences jealous feelings towards her mother, perhaps even hating her.
But widespread this theory was not received. It has remained exclusively one person's position regarding the lack of memories of an early period of life. |
| Hark Hawn theory | What the scientist proved: why we don’t remember childhood
This doctor believed that the child did not feel like a separate person. He does not know how to share the knowledge gained as a result of his own life experience, and those emotions and feelings that other people experience. For the baby everything is the same. Therefore, memory does not preserve the moment of birth and childhood. How do children know how to distinguish between mom and dad if they have not yet learned to speak and remember? Helps them with this semantic memory. The child easily navigates the rooms and shows who is dad and who is mom without getting confused. Exactly long term memory stores important information, so necessary in order to survive in this world. “Storage” will tell you the room where he is fed, bathed, dressed, the place where the treat is hidden, and so on. So why don’t we remember ourselves from birth:
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Why do some people remember themselves as children?
At what age do we begin to remember events that happen to us? Among your acquaintances, most likely, there are people who claim that they remember their infant years. If you are one of them, then stop deceiving yourself. And do not believe others who prove that this is so.
The brain erases events from childhood
An adult can remember moments that happened to him after five years, but not earlier.
What scientists have proven:
- Infantile amnesia completely erases the first years of life from memories.
- New brain cells, as they form, destroy all early memorable events.
- This action in science is called neurogenesis. It is constant at any age, but in infancy it is especially violent.
- Existing “cells” storing certain information are overwritten by new neurons.
- As a result, new events completely erase the old ones.
Amazing Facts of Human Consciousness
Our memory is diverse and has not yet been fully studied. Many scientists have tried to get to the bottom of the truth and determine how to influence it, forcing us to create the “storage chambers” we need. But even rapid development information progress does not make it possible to make such a castling.
However, some points have already been proven and may surprise you. Check out some of them.
| Fact | Description |
| Memory works even if one part of the brain hemisphere is damaged |
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| Complete amnesia almost never happens. | In reality, complete memory loss is practically non-existent. Do you often watch films in which the hero hits his head, as a result - previous events completely evaporated. In reality, it is almost impossible that during the first trauma everything is forgotten, and after the second one everything is restored.
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| The onset of brain activity in an infant begins in the embryonic state. | Three months after the egg is fertilized, the baby begins to place certain events in the cells of its storage. |
| A person can remember a lot of information |
It's just that you can't get the necessary facts out of your storage, the volume of which is unlimited. |
| It has been proven how many words can the human brain remember? | This figure is 100,000. There are so many words, but why don’t we remember ourselves from birth, it’s still interesting to know about this. |
| False memory exists | If it happens to us unpleasant events, traumatic to our psyche, consciousness can turn off the memory of such moments, recreating, exaggerating or distorting them. |
| Works while sleeping short term memory | That is why dreams mainly convey recent events happening to us. life facts, which we don’t even remember in the morning. |
| TV kills your ability to remember |
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| Brain growth occurs before age twenty-five |
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| Always needed new and unique experiences | Memory loves nothingness
Have you ever wondered why time flies so quickly? Why are the same impressions and emotions subsequently devoid of novelty? Remember your first meeting with your loved one. The appearance of the first child. Your vacation you've been waiting for all year.
But when it repeats, it no longer seems so joyful, but fleeting. After you have just tripled back to work after studying, you look forward to your first vacation, spend it usefully and slowly. The third and the rest are already flying by in an instant. The same applies to your relationship with a loved one. At first you count the seconds until your next meeting; they seem like an eternity to you. But, after the years you have lived together, before you know it, you are already celebrating your thirtieth anniversary.
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What can you remember from childhood?
Which are the most vivid memories Do you remember from childhood? The child's brain is designed in such a way that it is not susceptible to sound associations. Most often, he is able to remember events he saw or those that the children tried by touch.
The fear and pain experienced in infancy are forced out of the “storage chambers” and are replaced by positive and good impressions. But some people are able to remember only negative moments from life, and they completely erase happy and joyful moments from their memory.
Why do our hands remember more than our brains?
A person is able to reproduce bodily sensations in more detail than conscious ones. An experiment with ten-year-old children proved this fact. They were shown photos of their friends from nursery group. Consciousness did not recognize what they saw, only the galvanic skin reaction revealed that the children still remembered their grown-up comrades. This can be determined by electrical resistance experienced by the skin. It changes when excited.
Why does memory remember experiences?
Emotional memories become scarred by our most negative experiences. Thus, consciousness warns us for the future.
But sometimes the psyche simply does not have the ability to cope with the mental trauma suffered.
- Horrible moments simply do not want to fit into a puzzle, but are presented in our imagination in the form of scattered fragments.
- Such bad experience stored in implicit memory in broken pieces. A small detail - a sound, a look, a word, the date of an event - can resurrect the past that we are trying to erase from the depths of our brain.
- To obsessive terrible facts were not resurrected, each victim uses the principle of so-called dissociation.
- Experiences after trauma are fragmented into separate, incoherent fragments. Then they are not so associated with real life nightmares.
If you were offended:
Are there really options for answering the question of why we don’t remember ourselves from birth? Maybe this information can still be pulled out from the depths of our capacious storage?
When certain problems arise, we most often turn to psychologists. To help cope with its solution, specialists in some cases resort to hypnosis sessions.
It is often believed that all our painful real experiences come from deep childhood.
During a moment of trance, the patient can list all his hidden memories without even knowing it.
Sometimes, individual non-susceptibility to hypnosis does not make it possible to immerse yourself in early periods life path.
Some people, on a subconscious level, put up a blank wall and protect their emotional experiences from others. And this method has not received scientific confirmation. Therefore, if some people tell you that they perfectly remember the moment of their birth, do not take this information seriously. Most often these are simple inventions or a clever professional advertising trick.
Why do we remember moments that happen to us after we reach 5 years of age?
Can you answer:
- What do you remember from your childhood?
- What were your first impressions after visiting the nursery group?
Most often, people cannot give at least any answer to these questions. But, nevertheless, there are still at least seven explanations for this phenomenon.
| Cause | Description |
| Unripe brain | The roots of this hypothesis have come to us a long time ago.
But at present, many scientists argue with this statement.
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| Missing vocabulary | Due to the fact that until the age of three the child knows minimal amount words, he is unable to clearly describe the events and moments surrounding him.
For example, a girl remembered the smell of her grandmother’s pies in the village where she spent up to a year. |
| Muscular form |
You saw that they constantly copy the movements of adults, gradually bringing their actions to automatism. But psychologists argue with this statement.
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| Lack of sense of time | To put together a picture from flickering details from childhood, you need to understand in what specific period the corresponding event occurred. But the child cannot do this yet. |
| Memory with holes |
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| No desire to remember | An interesting position is taken by pessimists who argue why we don’t remember ourselves from birth. It turns out that unconscious fears are to blame for this:
Everyone is trying to force their helpless state out of uncomfortable memories. And, when we are able to serve ourselves independently, from that moment we begin to “record” all the information we receive and reproduce it, if necessary. |
| A very important period of life | The brain is like a computer
Think about how a computer works. If we make changes to system programs at your own discretion, this may lead to a failure of the entire system as a whole.
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Do we remember or not?
It cannot be assumed that all of the above hypotheses are one hundred percent correct. Since the moment of memorization is a very serious and not fully studied process, it is hard to believe that it is influenced by only one of the listed facts. Of course, it’s curious that we keep a lot of different things, but we don’t imagine our birth. This is the most greatest secret which humanity cannot solve. And, most likely, the question of why we don’t remember ourselves from birth will worry great minds for decades to come.
Your comments are very interesting - do you remember yourself as a child?
It will be interesting to find out.
Memory is the ability to store information and a complex set of biological processes. It is inherent in all living things, but is most developed in humans. Human memory is very individual; witnesses of the same event remember it differently.
What exactly do we not remember?
Memories take on a unique imprint of the psyche, which is capable of partially changing, replacing, and distorting them. The memory of children, for example, is capable of storing and reproducing absolutely invented events as real ones.
And this is not the only feature of children's memory. The fact that we do not remember how we were born seems completely surprising. In addition, almost no one can remember the first years of their life. What can we say about the fact that we are not able to remember anything about the time we were in the womb.
This phenomenon is called “infantile amnesia.” This is the only type of amnesia that has a universal human scale.
According to scientists' observations, most of People begin counting their childhood memories at about 3.5 years old. Until this moment, only a few can remember individual, very bright life situations or fragmentary pictures. Most even have the most impressive moments are erased from memory.
Early childhood is the most information-rich period. This is the time for active and dynamic learning of a person, familiarizing him with the world around him. Of course, people learn almost throughout their entire lives, but with age this process slows down in intensity.
But during the first years of life, the baby has to process literally gigabytes of information into short time. That's why they say that Small child“absorbs everything like a sponge.” Why don't we remember this the most important period own life? Psychologists and neuroscientists have asked these questions, but there is still no clear, universally accepted solution to this puzzle of nature.
Research into the causes of the phenomenon of “infantile amnesia”
And Freud again
The world famous guru of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, is considered the discoverer of the phenomenon. He gave it the name “infantile amnesia.” In the course of his work, he noticed that patients did not remember events relating to the first three and sometimes five years of life.
The Austrian psychologist began to explore the problem deeper. His final conclusion was within the framework of the traditional postulates of his teaching.
Freud considered the cause of childhood amnesia to be the infant’s early sexual attachment to a parent of the opposite sex, and, accordingly, aggression towards another parent of the same sex as the child. Such emotional overload is beyond the strength of the child’s psyche, and is therefore repressed into the unconscious area, where it remains forever.
The version raised many questions. In particular, it did not explain in any way the absolute inselectivity of the psyche in this case. Not all infant experiences have a sexual connotation, and memory refuses to store all the events of this period. Thus, the theory was not supported by practically anyone and remained the opinion of one scientist.
First there was the word
For a time, the popular explanation for childhood amnesia was next version: a person does not remember the period in which he was not yet able to speak fully. Its supporters believed that memory, when recreating events, puts them into words. Speech is fully mastered by a child by about three years of age.
Before this period, he simply cannot correlate phenomena and emotions with certain words, does not determine the connection between them, and therefore cannot record them in memory. An indirect confirmation of the theory was the too literal interpretation of the biblical quote: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Meanwhile, this explanation also has weak sides. There are many children who speak perfectly after the first year. This does not provide them with lasting memories of this period of life. In addition, a competent interpretation of the Gospel indicates that in the first line, “word” does not mean speech at all, but a certain thought form, an energetic message, something intangible.
Inability to form early memories
A number of scientists believe that the phenomenon is explained by the lack of abstract logical thinking, the inability to build individual events into a coherent picture. The child also cannot associate memories with specific time and place. Children early age do not yet have a sense of time. It turns out that we do not forget our childhood, but are simply unable to form memories.
"Lack of memory capacity"
Another group of researchers put forward interesting hypothesis: in the first years of childhood, a person absorbs and processes such an incredible amount of information that there is nowhere to put new “files” and they are written over the old ones, erasing all memories.
Underdevelopment of the hippocampus
There are several classifications of memory. For example, according to the duration of information storage, it is divided into short-term and long-term. So, some experts believe that we do not remember our childhood, because during this period only short-term memory works.
According to the method of memorization, semantic and episodic memory are distinguished. The first leaves the imprints of the first acquaintance with the phenomenon, the second - the results of personal contact with it. Scientists believe that they are stored in different parts brain and are able to unite only upon reaching three years old via the hippocampus.
Paul Frankland, a Canadian scientist, drew attention to the functions of a special part of the brain - the hippocampus, which is responsible for the birth of emotions, as well as for the transformation, transportation and storage of human memories. It is this that ensures the transition of information from short-term memory to long-term memory.
Having studied this part of the brain, Frankland found out that at human birth it is underdeveloped, but grows and develops as the individual matures. But even after the hippocampus has fully developed, it cannot organize old memories, but processes current portions of data.
Loss or gift of nature?
Each of the theories described above tries to figure out the mechanism of childhood memory loss and does not ask the question: why did the universe do this and deprive us of such valuable and dear memories? What is the meaning of such an irreparable loss?
In nature, everything is balanced and everything is not random. In all likelihood, the fact that we do not remember our birth and the first years of our development must be of some benefit to us. Only S. Freud touches on this point in his research. He raises the issue of traumatic experiences that are repressed from consciousness.
Indeed, the entire period of early childhood can hardly be called absolutely cloudless, happy and carefree. Maybe we're just used to thinking that way because we don't remember him?
It has long been a known fact that a baby at birth experiences physical pain no less than his mother, and emotional experience a baby during childbirth is akin to experiencing the process of death. Next begins the stage of familiarization with the world. But he is not always white and fluffy.
A little person is undoubtedly exposed to a huge amount of stress. Therefore, many modern scientists believe that Freud was right, at least, that infant amnesia has a protective function for the psyche. It protects the baby from emotional overloads that are too much for him and gives him the strength to develop further. This gives us another reason to thank nature for its foresight.
Parents should take into account the fact that this is precisely tender age the foundation of the child’s psyche is laid. Some of the most vivid fragments of memories may still remain fragmentarily in memory little man, and it is in the power of the father and mother to make these moments of his life full of light and love.
Video: why don’t we remember events from early childhood?