The wane of childhood amnesia for autobiographical and public event memories

We modified Bruce, Dolan, and Phillips-Grant's (2000) threshold procedure for determining the wane of childhood amnesia. In two experiments, undergraduates labelled childhood events (e.g., your first permanent tooth came in) as know or recollect memories and estimated their age at the event's occurrence. In both studies the estimated transition from mostly know memories to mostly recollect memories was roughly 4.7 years. This transition estimate was replicated in a sample of adults (ages 24-65 years) with both Bruce et al.'s event-generation task and the Experiment 1a questionnaire. By contrast, in two experiments a transition estimate of roughly 6 years was found for undergraduates' memories of public events (e.g., the Challenger explosion). The wane of childhood amnesia appears to occur around 4.7 years.     

Manipulating the reported age in earliest memories

ABSTRACT

Previous work suggests that the estimated age in adults’ earliest autobiographical memories depends on age information implied by the experimental context [e.g., Kingo, O. S., Bohn, A., & Krøjgaard, P. (2013). Warm-up questions on early childhood memories affect the reported age of earliest memories in late adolescence. Memory, 21(2), 280–284. doi:10.1080/09658211.2012.729598] and that the age in decontextualised snippets of memory is younger than in more complete accounts (i.e., event memories [Bruce, D., Wilcox-O’Hearn, L. A., Robinson, J. A., Phillips-Grant, K., Francis, L., & Smith, M. C. (2005). Fragment memories mark the end of childhood amnesia. Memory & Cognition, 33(4), 567–576. doi:10.3758/BF03195324]). We examined the malleability of the estimated age in undergraduates’ earliest memories and its relation with memory quality. In Study 1 (n?=?141), vignettes referring to events happening at age 2 rendered earlier reported ages than examples referring to age 6. Exploratory analyses suggested that event memories were more sensitive to the age manipulation than memories representing a single, isolated scene (i.e., snapshots). In Study 2 (n?=?162), asking self-relevant and public-event knowledge questions about participants’ preschool years prior to retrieval yielded comparable average estimated ages. Both types of semantic knowledge questions rendered earlier memories than a no-age control task. Overall, the reported age in snapshots was younger than in event memories. However, age-differences between memory types across conditions were not statistically significant. Together, the results add to the growing literature indicating that the average age in earliest memories is not as fixed as previously thought.     

Childhood amnesia: Empirical evidence for a two-stage phenomenon

The term childhood amnesia refers to the inability of adults to remember events from their infancy and early childhood. If we plot the number of memories that adults can recall as a function of age during childhood, the number of memories reported increases gradually as a function of age. Typically, this finding has been used to argue that gradual changes in memory development contribute to a gradual decline in childhood amnesia during the preschool period. Alternatively, it is possible that pooling data across participants has obscured more abrupt, stage-like changes in the remission of childhood amnesia. In the present study we examined the number and distribution of childhood memories for individual participants. Six adults were repeatedly interviewed about their childhood memories. We found that the distribution of adults' early childhood memories may be less continuous than pooled data suggest. This finding has important implications for current explanations of childhood amnesia.     

Children dating childhood memories

How accurate are children when dating very long-term memories? Chinese and European Canadian 8-, 11-, and 14-year-olds (N=344) recalled and dated memories from before they went to school in a memory fluency task. Parents provided verification of children's memories and age estimates. Across all age and culture groups, a telescoping effect (i.e., events were dated as taking place more recently than they actually did) was found for earlier memories (before 48 months) and a reverse telescoping effect for later memories (after 48 months). Older children showed a greater tendency to telescope earlier memories and a weaker tendency to reverse telescope later memories than did younger children. Euro-Canadian children showed larger reverse telescoping than Chinese children. These are the first systematic findings concerning the accuracy of children's dating of very long-term memories. They shed new light on the phenomenon of telescoping and have implications for research on childhood amnesia.     

The onset of childhood amnesia in childhood: A prospective investigation of the course and determinants of forgetting of early-life events

The present research was an examination of the onset of childhood amnesia and how it relates to maternal narrative style, an important determinant of autobiographical memory development. Children and their mothers discussed unique events when the children were 3 years of age. Different subgroups of children were tested for recall of the events at ages 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 years. At the later session they were interviewed by an experimenter about the events discussed 2 to 6 years previously with their mothers (early-life events). Children aged 5, 6, and 7 remembered 60% or more of the early-life events. In contrast, children aged 8 and 9 years remembered fewer than 40% of the early-life events. Overall maternal narrative style predicted children's contributions to mother–child conversations at age 3 years; it did not have cross-lagged relations to memory for early-life events at ages 5 to 9 years. Maternal deflections of the conversational turn to the child predicted the amount of information children later reported about the early-life events. The findings have implications for our understanding of the onset of childhood amnesia and the achievement of an adult-like distribution of memories in the school years. They highlight the importance of forgetting processes in explanations of the amnesia.     

Using cue words to investigate the distribution of autobiographical memories in childhood

The cue-word technique is frequently used with adults to examine the distribution of autobiographical memories across the life span. Such studies demonstrate childhood amnesia: a paucity of memories of events from the first 3(1/2) years of life, and a gradually increasing number of memories from age 3 to age 7. The pattern is remarkable in light of findings of autobiographical competence among children in the period of life eventually obscured by this amnesia. In the present study, we modified the cue-word task for use with school-age children. Seven- to 10-year-olds successfully generated and dated memories of past events. Girls provided more complete narratives than boys. Across the sample, the resulting distribution of memories was better fit by an exponential than by a power function, implying that early memories may not consolidate and instead remain vulnerable to interference. Implications for explanations of childhood amnesia are discussed.     

On the transition from childhood amnesia to the recall of personal memories

When adults are asked to report and date personal memories of their pasts, they show childhood amnesia, that is, diminished recall of experiences over the childhood years. This way of demonstrating the phenomenon was supplemented in the present study with a more direct approach: Participants reported events of early childhood that they knew they had experienced (because of family stories, photographs, etc.) but did not actually remember. The resulting cumulative relative frequency distributions produced by the two methods were substantially different, with the median age of remembered events being 6.07 years and of known events, 3.20 years. We suggest that the mean of these two ages, 4.64 years, gives a good indication of when childhood amnesia is eclipsed by personal memories in adults' recall of their personal pasts.     

Fragment memories mark the end of childhood amnesia

Adults described and dated two kinds of first remembrances: a personal event memory (the recollection of a personal episode that had occurred at some time in some place) and a memory fragment (an isolated memory moment having no event context and remembered, perhaps, as an image, a behavior, or an emotion). First fragment memories were judged to have originated substantially earlier in life than first event memories--approximately 3 1/3 years of age for first fragment memories versus roughly 4 years of age for first event memories. We conclude that the end of childhood amnesia is marked not by our earliest episodic memories, but by the earliest remembered fragments of childhood experiences.     

New perspectives on childhood memory: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

This special issue brings together the scholarship that contributes diverse new perspectives on childhood amnesia – the scarcity of memories for very early life events. The topics of the studies reported in the special issue range from memories of infants and young children for recent and distant life events, to mother–child conversations about memories for extended lifetime periods, and to retrospective recollections of early childhood in adolescents and adults. The methodological approaches are diverse and theoretical insights rich. The findings together show that childhood amnesia is a complex and malleable phenomenon and that the waning of childhood amnesia and the development of autobiographical memory are shaped by a variety of interactive social and cognitive factors. This collective body of work will facilitate discussion and deepen our understanding of the dynamics that influence the accessibility, content, accuracy, and phenomenological qualities of memories from early childhood.     

Childhood amnesia: Empirical evidence for a two-stage phenomenon

The term childhood amnesia refers to the inability of adults to remember events from their infancy and early childhood. If we plot the number of memories that adults can recall as a function of age during childhood, the number of memories reported increases gradually as a function of age. Typically, this finding has been used to argue that gradual changes in memory development contribute to a gradual decline in childhood amnesia during the preschool period. Alternatively, it is possible that pooling data across participants has obscured more abrupt, stage-like changes in the remission of childhood amnesia. In the present study we examined the number and distribution of childhood memories for individual participants. Six adults were repeatedly interviewed about their childhood memories. We found that the distribution of adults' early childhood memories may be less continuous than pooled data suggest. This finding has important implications for current explanations of childhood amnesia.     

Children’s autobiographical memories across the years: Forensic implications of childhood amnesia and eyewitness memory for stressful events

This is a review of two bodies of research conducted by myself and my colleagues that is relevant to child witness issues, namely childhood amnesia and children’s eyewitness memory for stressful events. Although considerable research over the years has investigated the phenomenon of childhood amnesia in adults, only recently has it begun to be investigated in children. For them, the age of earliest memory is a moving target over their early years. However, there is nonetheless both variation between children in how early their first memories are as well as variation between memories in terms of likelihood of being retained, and some factors influencing both are explored. In terms of eyewitness memory for stressful events, 2–13-year-old children who had been injured seriously enough to require emergency room medical treatment were interviewed. Long-term memory for these stressful events was traced, and factors influencing that retention were investigated. The findings from both areas of research have implications for developmental forensic psychology.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants’ reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants' reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

Early memories in young adults from separated and non-separated families

Two studies investigated the earliest memories of New Zealand European young adults (N = 80, Study 1 and N = 120, Study 2) from separated and non-separated families. Participants' earliest memories were assessed for age, for density (how far apart the memories were, Study 2) and for narrative coherence of the memories. Questionnaires were designed to investigate the role of changes in family structure, for example, in the number of adults in the participants' households and the timing of the parental separation. Study 2 further investigated stress and painful divorce-related feelings as additional variables in adjustment after divorce. No overall differences in age of earliest memory emerged between young adults from separated and non-separated parents. Within the group from separated parents, however, memories were earlier when parents separated early in the child's life (<age 7), which related to having extended family ties and more coherent memory narratives from early childhood (Study 2). Participants from separated families reported earlier but sparser memories when they reported higher levels of stress and painful feelings about the separation. The development of early autobiographical memories and the offset of childhood amnesia are discussed via transition and social interaction theories of autobiographical memory.     

Looking at the past through a telescope: adults postdated their earliest childhood memories

ABSTRACT

Our previous studies have consistently shown a telescoping error in children’s dating of earliest childhood memories. Preschool children through adolescents systematically date their earliest memories at older ages, in comparison with the age estimates provided by their parents or by themselves previously. In the current study, we examined the dating of earliest childhood memories in two samples of college adults and collected independent age estimates from their parents. Consistent with our findings with children, adults significantly postdated their earlier memories by approximately 12 months (Study 1) and 6 months (Study 2). The actual age of earliest memories was 2.5 years after adjusted for telescoping errors, 1 year earlier than what is commonly believed at 3.5 years. These findings challenge commonly held theoretical assumptions about childhood amnesia and highlight critical methodological issues in the study of childhood memory.