Remembering Early Childhood: How Much, How, and Why (or Why Not)

In this article, we consider recent research on three questions about people's memories for their early childhood: whether childhood amnesia is a real phenomenon, whether implicit memories survive when explicit memories do not, and why early episodic memories are sketchy. The research leads us to form three conclusions. First, we argue that childhood amnesia is a real phenomenon, as long as the term is defined clearly. Specifically, people are able to recall parts of their lives from the period between ages 2 and 5 years, but they recall less from that period than from other periods. Second, we conclude that implicit memories from early childhood may be evident even when explicit memories are not, a finding that suggests early experience may affect behavior in ways that people do not consciously recognize. Third, we argue that although young children are well known to be wonderfully efficient learners of semantic information, they have difficulty in either encoding or retrieving the interlinked aspects of events that lend them their autobiographical character. Although more evidence is needed, the relative lack of episodic memories of early childhood may be linked to maturation of prefrontal cortex.     

Abstracting and extracting: Causal coherence and the development of the life story

This study compared life story memories of emerging adults and early adolescents to other autobiographical memories. Participants described three scenes of their respective life stories, a high point, low point, and turning point narrative, and described the connections between them in a fourth narrative. Participants also related four autobiographical narratives from corresponding time periods for comparison. Narratives were analysed for two measures of causal coherence, narrative complexity and meaning making, and for thematic coherence. Life story narratives contained more self-related lessons and insights and greater recognition of complexity than non-life-story narratives, but these differences were confined to narratives of turning points and connections between events. Thematic connections between narratives were more abstract and self-related in life story narratives. Emerging adults' narratives, when compared to those of early adolescents, showed more evidence of self-related abstract thinking and recognition of multiple dimensions. Findings indicate consistent ways in which life story memories differ from other autobiographic memories, and show evidence of development in adolescence.     

Making the Past Present: Later Verbal Accessibility of Early Memories

A major question in the literature regarding memory development is whether memories of events from early in life are later accessible to verbal report. In a controlled study, we examined this question in toddlers who were 13, 16, or 20 months old at the time of exposure to specific events, and who were evaluated for spontaneous verbal expression of memory after delays of 9 to 12 months (Experiment 1), or 1 to 3 months (Experiment 2). Verbal reports of the events were elicited at the age of 3 years (both experiments). There was little evidence of spontaneous verbal mnemonic expression at the first delayed-recall test; the mnemonic expression that was observed was predicted by concurrent age and concurrent verbal fluency. Children who had been 20 months at the time of first experience of the events, and who were older and more verbally fluent at the first delayed-recall test (i.e., 20-month-olds in Experiment 1), provided verbal evidence of event memory at 3 years. The results are consistent with the suggestion that under some circumstances, early memories later are accessible to verbal report.     

The many faces of amnesia

Results from studies of retrograde amnesia provide much of the evidence for theories of memory consolidation. Retrograde amnesia gradients are often interpreted as revealing the time needed for the formation of long-term memories. The rapid forgetting observed after many amnestic treatments, including protein synthesis inhibitors, and the parallel decay seen in long-term potentiation experiments are presumed to reveal the duration of short-term memory processing. However, there is clear and consistent evidence that the time courses obtained in these amnesia experiments are highly variable within and across experiments and treatments. The evidence is inconsistent with identification of basic temporal properties of memory consolidation. Alternative views include modulation of memory and emphasize the roles that hormones and neurotransmitters have in regulating memory formation. Of related interest, converging lines of evidence suggest that inhibitors of protein synthesis and of other biochemical processes act on modulators of memory formation rather than on mechanisms of memory formation. Based on these findings, memory consolidation and reconsolidation studies might better be identified as memory modulation and "remodulation" studies. Beyond a missing and perhaps unattainable time constant of memory consolidation, some current views of memory consolidation assume that memories, once formed, are generally unmodifiable. It is this perspective that appears to have led to the recent interest in memory reconsolidation. But the view adopted here is that memories are continually malleable, being updated by new experiences and, at the same time, altering the memories of later experiences. Studies of memory remodulation offer promise of understanding the neurobiological bases by which new memories are altered by prior experiences and by which old memories are altered by new experiences.     

Childhood remembered: Reports of both unique and repeated events

To explore the significance of repeated memories for individuals' personal histories, we compared the characteristics of young adults' unique and repeated memories of childhood experiences. Memory type (unique vs. repeated) was a within-participant variable. In Experiment 1, college-age participants generated as many early memories as possible in 4 minutes; in Experiment 2, another sample provided complete reports of five early memories in each condition. In both experiments, participants rated the vividness, biographical importance and personal meaning of each memory and labelled the accompanying emotion. Unique memories were more vivid than repeated memories as well as more likely to include negative emotion, regardless of the method of reporting. Most importantly, college students rated their memories for unique and repeated events as equivalently infused with personal meaning. Analysis of the content of the memories reported in Experiment 2 established that unique and repeated memories did not differ in word count or percentages of perceptual terms or words indicating positive affect, although unique memories contained a greater percentage of negative affect. Additional analyses of content provided evidence for differences in the functions served by unique and repeated memories. The results have implications for the study of autobiographical memory and for identifying over-general memories.     

Transitional Relating and the Capacity for Play in Treatment

Based on an understanding of Winnicott's (1953/1975) notion of transitional relatedness and transitional phenomena as representing the use of play, illusion, and soothing capacities, I created a novel transitional object early memory probe that elicits a qualitative experience of current capacities for transitional relatedness. Working from a set of assumptions first articulated by Mayman (1968), early childhood memories are considered psychological reconstructions organized around unconscious object relations that are projected into the structure and content of early memories. It has been possible to assess patients' current capacities for transitional relatedness through the guise of past transitional object attachments. Two empirical studies (Fowler, Hilsenroth, & Handler, 1995, 1998) have demonstrated that greater levels of creative play and fantasy involved in the patient's memory productions are associated with the patient's greater capacity for transitional relatedness as evidenced by greater use of metaphor and use of the therapist as a soothing illusion. Thus, early memories are linked to self and other object relations structures, as well as to their expression in relationships--the prototypic transference relationships. This thesis, supported by empirical findings, is precisely what makes early memories so rich and revealing of patients' character structure, core conflicts, and potential transference enactments. Two clinical examples provided evidence for their use in complex treatments with adults.     

Positive involuntary autobiographical memories: You first have to live them

Involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are typically discussed in the context of negative memories such as trauma ‘flashbacks’. However, IAMs occur frequently in everyday life and are predominantly positive. In spite of this, surprisingly little is known about how such positive IAMs arise. The trauma film paradigm is often used to generate negative IAMs. Recently an equivalent positive film was developed inducing positive IAMs (Davies, Malik, Pictet, Blackwell, & Holmes, 2012). The current study is the first to investigate which variables (emotional reaction to the film; recognition memory of the film; participant characteristics) would best predict the frequency of positive IAMs. Higher levels of positive mood change to the film were significantly associated with the number of positive IAMs recorded in the subsequent week. Results demonstrate the importance of positive emotional reaction at the time of an event for subsequent positive IAMs.     

Parent–child relationship quality and infantile amnesia in adults

The first years of life are typically shrouded by infantile amnesia, but there is enormous variability between adults in how early and how much they can remember from this period. This study examined one possible factor affecting this variability: whether the perceived quality of parent–child relationships is associated with the number of early memories young adults can retrieve, and their age at the time of their first memory. We found such associations but they were qualified by parent gender. Mother–child relationships that were more affectively intense (greater social support but also more negative interchanges) were associated with recalling more early memories, although paternal companionship was most associated with how early an individual's first memory was. Affective tone of retrieved memories was also assessed, and a greater proportion of affectively positive memories (as well as fewer affectively neutral memories for males) was associated with high parental involvement in children's lives.     

Me Too!: Social modelling influences on early autobiographical memories

To investigate the malleability of early memories, 200 participants were asked to describe their earliest memories. Before doing so, approximately half were exposed to confederates who described very early memories such as their first steps or a second birthday party, while others were asked only to think about their earliest memories for two minutes before beginning writing. Participants who were exposed to confederate very early memories produced memories that were nearly a year younger on average than the memories reported by controls (2.99 years vs. 3.96 years). Additionally, when participants in the memory discussion condition were asked about an early event that a confederate had recounted they were more confident than controls that they could recall the event in their own lives. These results indicate that autobiographical memories for early events are quite susceptible to social influence and that simply hearing the very early memories of others can alter autobiographical memory. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Animals may not be stuck in time

Humans have the ability to mentally travel forward and back in time. They can retrieve vivid memories of past events (episodic memories) and can imagine the future (planning). Although it has been suggested that this is a uniquely human ability, the evidence for subjective time travel in humans is typically based on verbal report and elaboration. Such evidence cannot be obtained from animals. However, we may have indirect evidence for episodic memory and planning. For example, we can show that animals can ‘report’ about their recent past experience when they are unexpectedly asked to do so—performance that is analogous to episodic memory. We can also show that animals use the anticipation of a future event as the basis for a present action—analogous to planning. Thus, we have suggestive evidence that animals may not be stuck in time.     

Flashbulb memories of the Pope's resignation: Explicit and implicit measures across differing religious groups

In the present paper, we aimed to provide evidence in support of the idea tested in a recent study by Lanciano and colleagues that flashbulb memories (FBMs) are a special class of autobiographical memories that can be assessed through the autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT). FBMs and event memories (EMs) for the news of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI were evaluated in three samples of churchgoer Catholic, non-churchgoer Catholic and Evangelical Italian participants through the traditional self-report measures (specificity/accuracy, confidence, consistency) and aIAT indices. Results confirmed the strength of the association between FBM and true information. The aIAT effect was stronger for FBMs than for EM details, and for Catholic respondents who were the group most concerned by the original event. Furthermore, the use of implicit measures for memory assessment concurs with the traditional self-report indices of FBMs. The present evidence supports the idea that FBMs are special autobiographical memories which remain detailed, certain and consistent over time.     

Memory illusions and consciousness: Examining the phenomenology of true and false memories

Several recent false memory studies have addressed the question of how false memories are experienced phenomenologically. In this article we argue that it is not only possible to address questions of this sort, but it is necessary for a full understanding of memory illusions. We define memory illusions as false beliefs about the past that are experienced as memories. We then review a corpus of evidence that addresses the phenomenological experience of false memories. None of this evidence is perfect, but taken in its totality it suggests that false memories are similar to true memories but are also subtly different. We conclude with several recommendations for how the phenomenology of false memories can be fruitfully explored.     

Dreams and reality monitoring

Experiment 1 tested the counterintuitive prediction that memories for one's own dreams should not be particularly easy to discriminate from memories for someone else's dreams. Pairs of people reported dreams to each other that they had either dreamed, read, or made up the night before. On a test requiring subjects to discriminate events they had reported from those reported by their partner, subjects had more difficulty with real dreams than with dreams they read or made up. Experiment 2 provided evidence that real dreams do not simply produce overall weaker memories; the deficit for dreams was eliminated with more time to respond and with more detailed cues. In addition, subjects' ratings of various characteristics of their memories (e.g., vividness, personal relevance) indicated that dreams were not generally weaker or impoverished. The results are interpreted within the framework for reality monitoring described by Johnson and Raye (1981): Memories for real dreams are proposed to be deficient in conscious cognitive operations that help identify the origin of information generated in a waking state. At the same time, real dreams are embedded in a network of supporting memories that can be drawn on for reality monitoring decisions under appropriate circumstances. Finally, a comparison of recognition and recall indicated that dreams may leave persisting memories that are difficult to access via free recall.     

A 2‐year‐old child's memory of hospitalization during early infancy

A child who had had surgery at 5 months of age, and who had been treated at the time for post‐traumatic symptoms (reported in a previous paper by the author), was interviewed 2 years later and almost 3 years later to test for possible verbal recall of his hospitalization. He appeared to have some memories of the experience at 29 months of age, and he was able to superimpose verbal labels onto the preverbal memories. At 40 months of age, however, the memories were no longer verbally accessible. The results are discussed in the context of different theories of encoding, storage, retrieval, and loss of early memories. The findings from this study support other findings indicating that there appears to be some form of long‐term memory in place early in life, at least for highly salient, traumatic events. There may be one memory system for traumatic memories, fully functional at birth, and a later developing, different system for neutral memories. It is further hypothesized that there may be a sensitive period around 2–3 years of age for the recall of early traumatic memories, and that verbal recall is more likely to be present in verbally precocious children during that period. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seeking the Core: The Issues and Evidence Surrounding Recovered Accounts of Sexual Trauma

This review identifies some of the many layers that surround and potentially obscure the emotionally charged topic of recovered accounts of childhood abuse. Consideration of the, admittedly often indirect, evidence provides suggestive support for many of the components of both recovered and fabricated memories of abuse. With respect to recovered memories the available evidence suggests that: (1) although the prior accessibility of a memory may be difficult to determine, recovered memory reports can sometimes be corroborated with respect to their correspondence to actual abuse; (2) although individuals often retain memory for trauma, there is evidence for fluctuations in the accessibility of traumatic experiences, particularly for situations that are extremely difficult to talk about; (3) there are compelling mechanisms available to account for both the decreases and the subsequent increases in accessibility of traumatic memories that could lead to recovered memory reports. With respect to fabricated memories the available evidence suggests that: (1) people are highly capable of fabricating vivid recollections that can be confused with reality; (2) once fabricated, there seems to be no limit to the preposterous false memories that some individuals are capable of accepting particularly when in the presence of a persuasive individual in a position of authority. Although future research is needed to provide more direct evidence for the above claims, at present readers are urged to consider the strong likelihood that both recovered and fabricated memories correspond to real phenomena.     

The Origins of Fears of Compassion: Shame and Lack of Safeness Memories,Fears of Compassion and Psychopathology

Empirical and clinical research suggests that some individuals find self-generating compassion and receiving compassion from others difficult and aversive. However, it is unclear how these fears of compassion are linked to early experiences and to psychopathological symptoms. This study explores the relationship between shame traumatic memories, centrality of shame memories, early memories of warmth and safeness, fears of compassion, and depression, anxiety and paranoid symptoms. Participants were 302 individuals from the general community population, who completed self-report measures of fears of compassion, shame memories, early affiliative memories, and psychopathology. Shame traumatic and central memories were positively associated with fears of compassion for self, for others and from others, whereas early memories of warmth and safeness were negatively related to such fears. Path analyses revealed that fears of compassion for self and of receiving compassion from others mediated the effects of shame traumatic memory, centrality of shame memory and early memories of warmth and safeness on depressive, anxious and paranoid symptoms. These findings have implications for therapeutic interventions as these fears, as well as the negative shame-based emotional memories fuelling them, may need to be addressed in therapy to assist patients in self-generating and receiving compassion.     

Looking at remembering: Eye movements,pupil size,and autobiographical memory

To examine the relationship between visual imagery and autobiographical memory, eye position and pupil size were recorded while participants first searched for memories and then reconstructed the retrieved memories (Experiment 1), or only searched for memories (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we observed that, although recollective experience was not associated with the number of fixations per minute, memories that took longer to retrieve were linked to increased pupil size. In Experiment 2, we observed that directly retrieved memories were recalled more quickly and were accompanied by smaller pupils than generatively retrieved memories. After correcting for response time, retrieval mode also produced an effect, showing that decreased pupil size is not simply due to directly retrieved memories being recalled more quickly. These findings provide compelling evidence that objective measures, such as pupil size, can be used alongside subjective measures, such as self-reports, to distinguish between directly retrieved and generatively retrieved memories.