Infantile Amnesia

The main consensus reached by the authors of the articles we read this week was that infants and young children do have the ability to recall some incidents but that there are several factors that prevent them from being remembered in adulthood. Numerous studies have proved than very young infants can recognize their mother’s voice. The articles described many studies that had done variations on an experiment where the researcher performed a strange action with a prop, then gave the prop to the child to see if they would copy the action. Even after a time delay, infants could produce the correct action. As the age of the child increased, the time between initially observing the action and being able to correctly recall it increased. While these memories do not remain into adulthood, they can be remembered for long enough, proving that infants do have a functioning memory system.

The articles we read also discussed the differences between linguistic and non-linguistic memory. Pillemer describes these two systems as imagistic and narrative. Imagistic memories are made up of sounds, images, and emotions and while this system can be used throughout the life span, it is especially useful for young children who do not yet have adequate language abilities. The narrative system employs words, generally in the form of a story. Imagistic memories are experienced while narrative memories can be related in a coherent form to others.

These studies also discuss the importance of autobiographical memories. These can only be formed after a person has formed a sense of self, meaning that they understand who they are in relation to everything around them. The ability to report autobiographical memory is usually influenced by how parents encourage their children to talk about past experiences. Some parents ask leading questions allow their child time to elaborate while others simply ask the same question over and over again and then move on to another topic. It would be interesting to look at how much of an effect these parental styles have over time. Do these influences persist into adulthood and affect the way people interact with their own children?

Pillemer, to my delight, has finally introduced the topic of repression, arguing against it as a reason why children cannot remember their early years. Repression is one of Freud’s favorite explanations; he believes that early memories are forgotten because adults don’t want to remember the sexual nature of the earliest memories. Pillemer disagrees with this and argues that mental development has the most affect on when memories can be recalled. Early memories are formed in a way that is not accessible from the adult brain.

I was also intrigued by the last section from Pillemer’s chapter, Repression as a Failure of Translation. Here, he suggests that forgotten memories of trauma are not repressed; they are simply encoded in a way that the adult does not know how to interpret. Children often do not have a complete understanding of trauma and therefore, have no solid way of storing it to be remembered later. However, if this is true, then how exactly can these memories be recovered? If they had better linguistic skills or a more complete sense of self at the time of the trauma, is it more likely to be recovered/remembered later on?