Forgotten yet significant memories: Researchers explain why we struggle to recall events from early childhood.

Isn't it sad that we can't remember events from our earliest childhood? The people around you carry you in their arms, cooing and clapping when you babble nonsense (which somehow never elicits the same enthusiasm later on - I've tried! Ed.). But we can never return to that golden time in our memories! Scientists have proposed several hypotheses to explain the phenomenon of childhood amnesia.

Until recently, most psychologists agreed that an infant's brain is simply too small to retain memories.

It was believed that the hippocampus (the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory) is not fully developed at this age. Additionally, the neural networks necessary for storing memories are still forming.

A 3-Month-Old Baby Revolutionizes Science

However, in the 1980s, psychologist Caroline Rovee-Collier demonstrated that infants have a remarkable memory. This discovery had a fascinating backstory. Caroline gave birth to her first child while still a student. At that time, she was not yet a world-renowned researcher in intellectual development; she merely wanted to finish her dissertation while her baby demanded her attention. So, she devised a game - tying a ribbon to the leg of 3-month-old Benjamin, the other end attached to a musical toy - a carousel. As soon as the boy kicked his leg, the toy would activate: a cheerful melody played, and beautiful figures moved. Benjamin loved the game so much that it became his favorite pastime. This helped his mother make significant progress in her research. The moment of realization came when the child began kicking his leg outside in the stroller - without the ribbon or the toy. Caroline understood that the child remembered his game and wanted to play it - which contradicted the scientific theories of that time, asserting that infants had nothing to recall. Caroline then conducted thousands of experiments with hundreds of infants under various conditions. It turned out that 6-month-old children could remember the experience of playing with the ribbon for several weeks after it ended.

- There is no doubt that we remember our early childhood memories, - asserted Professor Rovee-Collier. - It’s just very hard for us to access them. Children, like elephants, never forget.

Other studies have established that experiences of early childhood trauma increase the risk of developing depression in adulthood. “How can these experiences permanently affect our lives if they are forgotten?” says Christina Alberini, a professor of neuroscience at New York University.

Infants and Memory-Knowledge

Therefore, everything we see and hear in infancy is processed by consciousness and influences personality development. We simply cannot retrieve these memories. But why?

- This is related to the peculiarities of how our memory is structured. In reality, we remember a vast amount of information acquired during infancy, - believes Veronika Nurkova, a professor at the Psychology Department of Moscow State University. - After all, when we were small children, we were introduced to the surrounding world, learned to walk and talk. What we mastered in early childhood stays with us for life. This can be termed memory-knowledge - abstract representations that allow us to construct our worldview. The memory-knowledge system is common to all living beings. Even the simplest worm possesses such memory to navigate its environment: to put it simply, if I crawl to the right, a tasty leaf awaits me, but if I crawl to the left, birds might eat me. Then episodic memory emerges.

Is the Iron Off and Who is the Father of the Child?

- What is episodic memory?

- Beings begin to remember episodes related to them. But this experience is tied to a short time frame. For example, you leave your home and someone asks you: “Is the iron off?” And your working memory allows you to rewind the chain of events to recall whether the iron is off or not. However, a month later, you probably won’t be able to remember that detail. Gradually, a buffer forms, which is called episodic memory: it records events that happened to me personally and may be useful to me. The retention period for this information is short, roughly around a year. I believe this is linked to the development of primitive society during the transition from hunting to agriculture.

- How so?

- When it was time to harvest, people needed to remember what and where they had planted some time ago. The annual agricultural cycle or a similar length cycle of gestation plays a crucial role here. Because if a child is born in your tribe, it would be good to remember who the father is. After all, that determines their status in the tribe. It’s one thing if the father is the chief, and quite another if he is a hapless hunter. Episodic memory retains information as long as needed. Once the situation is resolved, I immediately forget it.

Everything we see and hear in infancy is processed by consciousness and influences personality development. We simply cannot retrieve these memories.

Photo: Shutterstock.

We Are What We Remember About Ourselves

- Where are childhood memories stored?

- There is a special type of memory for this - autobiographical memory, where I remember things about myself forever. No one else has this. I remember my first day of school, what my bouquet looked like. I recall how my teacher took my hand and I walked five steps up the school porch. The question is: why is this necessary? It won’t serve any practical purpose in my life!

- So why?

- To formulate a strategy for my life. Autobiographical memory appears when an individual person emerges - a personality that must think of themselves as more than just a part of a social group. And personality arises as a result of memories about oneself. These memories: the first time in first grade, the first kiss, the first failing grade - are self-defining memories. Through them, we understand who we are, what our traits are, and what we desire.

- It seems like something obvious.

- Not at all. It is difficult for us to even imagine the free world we live in today. A medieval person, who opened the door of their hut, only knew one path. Their life was strictly structured from the outside. Religious doctrines (how many times to pray, how to fast, when to go to church, etc.), social hierarchy, strict rules of conduct in the community, what clothes to wear, etc. - the entire life of that person was predetermined. We, on the other hand, are constantly in a state of free choice, determining our own goals and the course of our lives. But we have to search for the basis for this choice, and that is found in autobiographical memory. It defines what kind of person we are. The modern individual accumulates a fantastic number of memories about themselves. In the 19th and 20th centuries, people commonly kept diaries, and now we post a vast amount of photos on social media, documenting every step we take. We write an incredible number of online memoirs. This has become a separate task in life.

The More Complex a Person's Past, the Easier It Is to Build the Future

- So, if it's so important for us to “remember everything,” why don't we remember ourselves from infancy?

- Because our consciousness operates only with words, and initially, a child must learn to speak at a certain acceptable level. Furthermore, the brain is not capable of retaining a chronicle of events: it has to perform many other functions, as it needs to acquire knowledge and motor skills. If a child develops normally, the “technical ability” to form autobiographical memory arises only around the age of 2. After that, everything depends on the environment they are in. For example, if a child grows up in an orphanage, their sense of self as a personality is formed poorly. We know that orphans often struggle to adapt to normal life. It is often said that they lack life skills. I think the issue is deeper: they lack a proper autobiographical memory and cannot define themselves or set long-term goals in life. I wake up, I want to have breakfast and drink beer. But what I ultimately want - I don't know. The more complex a person's picture of the past, the greater their opportunities to build and plan their future.

- How can one build a good autobiographical memory?

- It develops through communication with adults: we are what our parents tell us about ourselves. What they articulate, we remember for a lifetime. The parental strategy for building autobiographical memory almost entirely determines what a person will remember about themselves when they grow up. And consequently, what kind of personality they will become. What will their self-esteem be? And how will they perceive themselves.

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