This phenomenon is sometimes called childhood amnesia, or infantile amnesia.Įxactly why people have difficulty remembering events from their first years of life is not well understood, although several explanations have been advanced. Enduring Issuesĭespite the richness of our autobiographical memories, research shows that people rarely if ever recall events that occurred before they were 2 years old ( Howe, 2003). However, it is important to remember that like all memory, autobiographical memory is not always accurate, though its accuracy does increase when distinctive cues are present to help elicit the recall of information ( McDonough & Gallo, 2008). ![]() We may also store autobiographical memories in event clusters, which are groups of memories on a related theme or that take place close together in time ( N. This view explains why we can usually remember when events occurred relative to these major landmarks in our lives ( Shum, 1998). It may be that we store autobiographical information according to important events in our lives, such as beginning college, getting married, or experiencing the death of a loved one. Other research, however, shows that people over age 50 are more likely than younger people to recall events from relatively early in life, probably because many of the most critical choices we make in our lives occur in late adolescence and early adulthood ( Janssen, Chessa, & Murre, 2005 Mackavey, Malley, & Stewart, 1991).Įxactly how the vast amount of autobiographical information stored in memory is organized is not fully understood, but research in this area has supported two interesting theories. In general, most personal memories concerned relatively recent events: The longer ago an event occurred, the less likely people were to report it ( Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974). The words were all common nouns, such as hall and oven, for which people can easily create images. ![]() In a classic study of autobiographical memory, researchers asked young adults to report the earliest personal memory that came to mind when they saw each of 20 words and then to estimate how long ago each event had occurred. ![]() In general, recent life events are, of course, easier to recall than earlier ones. 295) contends, “autobiographical memory is central to self, to identity, to emotional experience, and to all those attributes that define an individual.” Why do we have so few memories from the first 2 years of life?Īutobiographical memory refers to our recollection of events that happened in our life and when those events took place as such, it is a form of episodic memory.
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