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Babies absorb information like a sponge - why then does it take us so long to form our first memory of ourselves? The columnist decided to find out the reason for this phenomenon.
You met for lunch with people you have known for quite some time. You organized holidays together, celebrated birthdays, went to the park, enjoyed eating ice cream and even went on vacation with them.
By the way, these people - your parents - have spent a lot of money on you over the years. The problem is that you don't remember it.
Most of us do not remember at all the first few years of our lives: from the most important moment - birth - to the first steps, first words, and even to kindergarten.
Even after a precious first memory appears in our head, subsequent “memory notches” turn out to be rare and fragmentary until later in life.
What is this connected with? The gaping gap in the biography of children upsets parents and has baffled psychologists, neurologists and linguists for several decades.
The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who coined the term “infantile amnesia” more than a hundred years ago, was completely obsessed with this topic.
Exploring this mental vacuum, you involuntarily ask yourself interesting questions. Is our first memory true or is it made up? Do we remember the events themselves or only their verbal description?
And is it possible one day to remember everything that seems to have not been preserved in our memory?
Illustration copyright Simpleinsomnia/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0 Image caption Children absorb information like a sponge - at an incredible rate, but at the same time they cannot clearly remember what happens to them.This phenomenon is doubly mysterious because in all other respects, babies absorb new information like a sponge, forming 700 new ones every second. neural connections and unleashing language learning skills that would be the envy of any polyglot.
Judging by the latest research, the child begins to train the brain in the womb.
But even in adults, information is lost over time if no attempt is made to preserve it. Therefore, one explanation is that infantile amnesia is simply a consequence natural process forgetting events that took place during our lives.
Some people remember what happened to them at two years old, and some do not have any memories of themselves until the age of 7-8 years
The answer to this question can be found in the work of the 19th-century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who conducted a number of pioneering studies on himself to reveal the limits of human memory.
In order to make his brain look like a blank slate at the beginning of the experiment, he came up with meaningless strings of syllables - words made up at random from randomly selected letters, such as "kag" or "slans" - and began to memorize thousands of such letter combinations.
The forgetting curve he compiled based on the results of the experiment indicates the presence of a strikingly rapid decline in a person’s ability to remember what he has learned: in the absence special effort human brain eliminates half of all new knowledge within an hour.
By the 30th day, a person remembers only 2-3% of what he learned.
One of the most important conclusions Ebbinghaus is that such forgetting of information is quite predictable. To find out how much a baby's memory differs from that of an adult, just compare the graphs.
In the 1980s, after making the appropriate calculations, scientists found that a person remembers surprisingly few events that took place in his life in the period from birth to the age of six or seven. Obviously there's something else going on here.
Illustration copyright SimpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0 Image caption The formation and development of our memory can be determined by cultural characteristicsIt’s interesting that the veil over memories is lifted for everyone at different ages. Some people remember what happened to them when they were two years old, and some people do not have any memories of themselves until the age of 7-8 years.
On average, fragments of memories begin to appear in a person at about three and a half years of age.
What's even more interesting is that the degree of forgetfulness varies depending on the country: average age, in which a person begins to remember himself, may differ in different countries for two years.
Can these findings shed any light on the nature of such a vacuum? To find the answer to this question, psychologist Qi Wang from Cornell University(USA) collected hundreds of memories in groups of Chinese and American students.
In full accordance with national stereotypes, the Americans' stories were longer, more detailed, and with a clear emphasis on themselves.
The Chinese spoke more succinctly and with an emphasis on facts; in general, their childhood memories began six months later.
This pattern is confirmed by many other studies. More detailed stories those who are focused on oneself seem to be remembered more easily.
If your memories are vague, it's your parents' fault.
It is believed that self-interest contributes to the functioning of memory, because if there is own point From our perspective, events are filled with meaning.
"It's all about the difference between the memories 'There were tigers at the zoo' and 'I saw tigers at the zoo, and although they were scary, I had a lot of fun,'" explains Robin Fivush, a psychologist at Emory University (USA).
Carrying out the same experiment again, Wang interviewed the mothers of the children and established exactly the same pattern.
In other words, if your memories are vague, your parents are to blame.
The first memory in Van's life is a walk in the mountains in the vicinity of his home in Chinese city Chongqing with his mother and sister. She was then about six years old.
However, until she moved to the United States, no one thought to ask her about the age she remembers herself.
"In Eastern cultures, no one is interested in childhood memories. People are just surprised: 'Why do you need this?'" she says.
Illustration copyright Kimberly Hopkins/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0 Image caption Some psychologists are convinced that the ability to form vivid memories about oneself comes only with mastery of speech"If society tells you that these memories are important to you, you will retain them," Wang says.
The earliest memories begin to form are among young representatives of the New Zealand Maori people, who are characterized by great attention to the past. Many people remember what happened to them when they were only two and a half years old.
The way we talk about our memories can be influenced by cultural characteristics, and some psychologists believe that events begin to be stored in a person’s memory only after he masters speech.
"Language helps structure, organize memories in the form of a narrative. If you present an event in the form of a story, the resulting impressions become more organized and easier to remember over time," says Fivush.
However, some psychologists are skeptical about the role of language in memory. For example, children who are born deaf and grow up without knowing sign language begin to remember themselves at about the same age.
This suggests that we cannot remember the first years of our lives simply because our brains are not yet equipped with the necessary tools.
This explanation was the result of an examination of the most famous patient in the history of neurology, known under the pseudonym H.M.
After an unsuccessful operation to treat epilepsy in H.M. the hippocampus was damaged, it lost the ability to remember new events
After an unsuccessful operation to cure H.M.'s epilepsy. the hippocampus was damaged, it lost the ability to remember new events.
"It's the seat of our ability to learn and remember. If it weren't for the hippocampus, I wouldn't be able to remember our conversation," says Jeffrey Fagen, who researches memory and learning at St. John's University.
It is interesting to note, however, that the patient with the hippocampal injury could nevertheless learn other types of information - just like an infant.
When scientists asked him to draw a five-pointed star from its reflection in a mirror (it's harder than it looks!), he improved with each attempt, although each time it seemed to him as if he was drawing it for the first time.
Perhaps at an early age the hippocampus is simply not developed enough to form full-fledged memories of events.
During the first few years of life, baby monkeys, rat pups, and children continue to add neurons to the hippocampus, and infancy none of them are able to remember anything for a long time.
However, it appears that as soon as the body stops creating new neurons, they suddenly acquire this ability. "In young children and infants, the hippocampus is very underdeveloped," Fagen says.
But does this mean that, in an underdeveloped state, the hippocampus loses stored memories over time? Or are they not formed at all?
Illustration copyright SimpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0 Image caption Their early memories cannot always be considered accurate - sometimes they are modified based on the results of a discussion of a particular eventBecause childhood events can continue to influence our behavior long after we forget them, some psychologists believe they are likely to remain in our memories.
"It's possible that memories are stored in some place that is currently inaccessible, but this is very difficult to prove empirically," Fagen explains.
However, we should not trust too much what we remember about that time - it is possible that our childhood memories are largely false and we remember events that never happened to us.
Elizabeth Loftes, a psychologist from the University of California at Irvine (USA), devoted her scientific research to this very topic.
"People can pick up ideas and begin to visualize them, making them indistinguishable from memories," she says.
Imaginary events
Loftes herself knows firsthand how this happens. When she was 16 years old, her mother drowned in a swimming pool.
Many years later, a relative convinced her that it was she who discovered the surfaced body.
“Memories” came flooding back to Loftes, but a week later the same relative called her back and explained that she had made a mistake - someone else had found the body.
Of course, no one likes to hear that their memories are not real. Loftes knew she needed hard evidence to convince her doubters.
Back in the 1980s, she recruited volunteers for the study and began giving them “memories.”
The most big mystery is not why we don’t remember our earlier childhood, but whether our memories can be trusted at all
Loftes came up with an elaborate lie about childhood trauma they allegedly suffered when they got lost in a store, where they were later found by someone kind old lady and took her to her parents. To make it more believable, she brought family members into the story.
"We told study participants, 'We talked to your mother and she told us what happened to you.'"
Almost a third of the subjects fell into the laid trap: some managed to “remember” this event in every detail.
In fact, sometimes we are more confident in the accuracy of our imagined memories than in the events that actually took place.
And even if your memories are based on real events, it is quite possible that they were subsequently reformulated and reformatted to reflect conversations about the event rather than their own memories of it.
Remember when you thought how fun it would be to transform your sister into a zebra using a permanent marker? Or did you just see it on a family video?
And that amazing cake your mom baked when you turned three? Maybe your older brother told you about him?
Perhaps the biggest mystery is not why we don’t remember our earlier childhood, but whether our memories can be trusted at all.
Imagine you are having lunch with someone you have known for several years. You celebrated holidays, birthdays together, had fun, went to parks and ate ice cream. You even lived together. Overall, this someone has spent quite a lot of money on you—thousands. Only you can't remember any of this.
The most dramatic moments in life are your birthday, your first steps, your first words spoken, your first meal, and even your first years in life. kindergarten— most of us remember nothing about the first years of life. Even after our first precious memory, the rest seem distant and scattered. How so?
This gaping hole in the chronicle of our lives has frustrated parents and puzzled psychologists, neurologists and linguists for decades. Even Sigmund Freud studied this issue extensively, which is why he coined the term “infantile amnesia” more than 100 years ago.
The study of this tabula-rasa led to interesting questions. Do our first memories really tell us what happened to us, or were we made up? Can we remember events without words and describe them? Can we one day regain the missing memories?
Part of this puzzle stems from the fact that babies are like sponges. new information, form 700 new neural connections every second and have such language learning skills that would make the most accomplished polyglots green with envy. Latest research showed that they begin to train their minds already in the womb.
But even in adults, information is lost over time if no attempt is made to preserve it. Therefore, one explanation is that childhood amnesia is simply the result of the natural process of forgetting things that we encounter during our lives.
The 19th century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted unusual experiments on himself to discover the limits of human memory. To provide your consciousness with complete Blank sheet To begin with, he invented “nonsense syllables”—made-up words made up of random letters, like “kag” or “slans”—and began memorizing thousands of them.
His forgetting curve showed a disconcertingly rapid decline in our ability to remember what we've learned: Left alone, our brains clear out half of the material we've learned in an hour. By day 30 we leave only 2-3%.
Ebbinghaus discovered that the way in which all this was forgotten was quite predictable. To find out whether babies' memories are any different, we need to compare these curves. When scientists did calculations in the 1980s, they found that we remember much less from birth to age six or seven than would be expected based on these curves. Obviously something completely different is happening.
What is remarkable is that for some the veil is lifted earlier than for others. Some people can remember events from the age of two, while others do not remember anything that happened to them until they were seven or even eight years old. On average, blurry footage begins at three and a half years of age. What's even more remarkable is that the discrepancies vary from country to country, with differences in memories reaching an average of two years.
To understand the reasons for this, psychologist Qi Wang from Cornell University collected hundreds of memories from Chinese and American students. As national stereotypes would predict, American histories were longer, demonstrably more self-centered, and more complex. Chinese stories, on the other hand, were shorter and to the point; they also started six months later on average.
This state of affairs is supported by numerous other studies. Memories that are more detailed and self-directed are easier to recall. It is believed that narcissism helps with this, since gaining one’s own point of view gives meaning to events.
"There's a difference between thinking, 'There are tigers at the zoo,' and 'I saw the tigers at the zoo, and it was both scary and fun,'" says Robin Fivush, a psychologist at Emory University.
When Wang ran the experiment again, this time interviewing the children's mothers, she found the same pattern. So if your memories are foggy, blame it on your parents.
Wang's first memory is of hiking in the mountains near her family's home in Chongqing, China, with her mother and sister. She was about six. But she wasn't asked about it until she moved to the US. “In Eastern cultures, childhood memories are not particularly important. People are surprised that someone would ask that,” she says.
"If society tells you that these memories are important to you, you will keep them," Wang says. The record for earliest memories belongs to the Maori in New Zealand, whose culture includes a strong emphasis on the past. Many can remember events that occurred at the age of two and a half years.”
“Our culture may also shape the way we talk about our memories, and some psychologists believe that memories emerge only when we acquire language.”
Language helps us provide structure to our memories, a narrative. By creating a story, the experience becomes more organized and therefore easier to remember for a long time, says Fivush. Some psychologists doubt that this plays big role. They say there is no difference between the age at which deaf children growing up without sign language report their earliest memories, for example.
All this leads us to the following theory: we cannot remember the early years simply because our brains have not acquired the necessary equipment. This explanation follows from the very famous person in the history of neuroscience, known as patient HM. After unsuccessful surgery to treat his epilepsy, which damaged his hippocampus, HM could not remember any new events. “It is the center of our ability to learn and remember. If I didn't have a hippocampus, I wouldn't be able to remember that conversation,” says Jeffrey Fagen, who studies memory and learning at Saint John's University.
Remarkably, however, he was still able to learn other types of information—just like babies. When scientists asked him to copy the design of a five-pointed star while looking at it in a mirror (not as easy as it seems), he got better with each round of practice, even though the experience itself was completely new to him.
Perhaps when we are very young, the hippocampus is simply not developed enough to create a rich memory of an event. Baby rats, monkeys and humans continue to gain new neurons in the hippocampus in the first few years of life, and none of us can create lasting memories in infancy - and all indications are that the moment we stop making new neurons, we suddenly start form long-term memory. "In infancy, the hippocampus remains extremely underdeveloped," Fagen says.
But does the underdeveloped hippocampus lose our long-term memories, or do they not form at all? Because events experienced in childhood can influence our behavior later for a long time after we erase them from memory, psychologists believe they must remain somewhere. "It's possible that memories are stored in a place that is no longer accessible to us, but it's very difficult to demonstrate this empirically," Fagen says.
At the same time, our childhood is probably full false memories events that never happened.
Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, has devoted her career to studying this phenomenon. “People pick up ideas and visualize them—they become like memories,” she says.
Imaginary events
Loftus knows first-hand how this happens. Her mother drowned in a swimming pool when she was just 16 years old. Several years later, a relative convinced her that she had seen her body floating. Memories flooded her mind until a week later when the same relative called and explained that Loftus had gotten it all wrong.
Of course, who would like to find out that their memories are not real? To convince skeptics, Loftus needs irrefutable evidence. Back in the 1980s, she invited volunteers for research and seeded the memories herself.
Loftus unfolded an elaborate lie about a sad trip to shopping mall, where they got lost, and then were rescued by a gentle elderly woman and reunited with their family. To make the events even more true, she even brought in their families. “We usually tell study participants that we talked to your mom, your mom told you something that happened to you.” Almost a third of the subjects recalled this event in vivid detail. In fact, we are more confident in our imaginary memories than in those that actually happened.
Even if your memories are based on real events, they were probably cobbled together and reworked in hindsight - these memories are implanted by conversations, not specific memories first person.
Perhaps the biggest mystery is not why we can't remember our childhood, but whether we can trust our memories.
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 body. It stores everything that we consider ourselves to be in our 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, because 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 located precisely 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 all you need to do is 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 came the feeling 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 I was aware of it and enjoyed it.
So what's the deal? After all, children absorb information like a sponge, forming 700 neural connections per second and learning language at a speed that any polyglot would envy.
Many believe the answer lies in the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus, a 19th-century German psychologist. For the first time, he conducted a series of experiments on himself to find out the limits of human memory.
To do this, he composed series of meaningless syllables (“bov”, “gis”, “loch” and the like) and memorized them, and then checked how much information was stored in memory. As the forgetting curve, also developed by Ebbinghaus, confirms, we forget what we have learned extremely quickly. Without repetition, our brain forgets half of the new information within the first hour. By day 30, only 2–3% of the data collected is retained.
While studying forgetting curves in the 1980s, scientists discovered David C. Rubin. Autobiographical Memory. that we have far fewer memories from birth to 6–7 years of age than might be expected. At the same time, some remember individual events that occurred when they were only 2 years old, while others have no memories at all of events before they were 7–8 years old. On average, fragmentary memories appear only after three and a half years.
What's particularly interesting is that there are differences across countries in how memories are stored.
The role of culture
Psychologist Qi Wang from Cornell University conducted a study Qi Wang. Culture effects on adults’ earliest childhood recollection and self-description., in which she recorded the childhood memories of Chinese and American students. As national stereotypes might suggest, American stories were longer and more detailed, and significantly more self-centered. Stories Chinese students, on the contrary, were brief and reproduced the facts. In addition, their memories began, on average, six months later.
The difference is confirmed by other studies Qi Wang. The Emergence of Cultural Self-Constructs.. People whose memories are more focused on self, easier to remember.
“Between these memories: “There were tigers at the zoo” and “I saw tigers at the zoo, they were scary, but it was still very interesting.” a big difference“, say psychologists. The emergence of a child’s interest in himself, the emergence of his own point of view helps to better remember what is happening, because this is what largely influences the perception of various events.
Ki Wang then conducted another experiment, this time interviewing American and Chinese mothers Qi Wang, Stacey N. Doan, Qingfang Song. Talking about Internal States in Mother-Child Reminiscing Influences on Children's Self-Representations: A Cross-Cultural Study.. The results remained the same.
"IN oriental culture childhood memories are not given such importance, says Wang. - When I lived in China, no one even asked me about this. If society instills that these memories are important, they are more retained in memory.”
Interestingly, the earliest memories are recorded among the indigenous population of New Zealand - the Maori S. MacDonald, K. Uesiliana, H. Hayne. Cross-cultural and gender differences in childhood amnesia.
. Their culture places great emphasis on childhood memories, and many Maori remember events that happened when they were only two and a half years old.
Role of the hippocampus
Some psychologists believe that the ability to remember comes to us only after we master a language. However, it has been proven that children who are deaf from birth have their first memories from the same period as others.
This has led to the theory that we do not remember the first years of life simply because our brains do not yet have the necessary “equipment” at that time. As you know, the hippocampus is responsible for our ability to remember. At a very early age, he is not yet fully developed. This has been seen not only among humans, but also among rats and monkeys Sheena A. Josselyn, Paul W. Frankland. Infantile amnesia: A neurogenic hypothesis..
However, some childhood events affect us even when we don’t remember them. Stella Li, Bridget L. Callaghan, Rick Richardson. Infantile amnesia: forgotten but not gone., therefore, some psychologists believe that the memory of these events is still stored, but it is inaccessible to us. So far, scientists have not yet been able to prove this experimentally.
Imaginary events
Many of our childhood memories often turn out to be unreal. We hear from relatives about some situation, we imagine the details, and over time it begins to seem like our own memory.
And even if we really remember about a particular event, this memory can change under the influence of the stories of others.
So maybe main question not why we don’t remember ours early childhood, but whether we can even trust at least one memory.
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 in 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?