There has been no definitive answer for what causes childhood amnesia. Statistically, the research has shown an age timeline for adults typically accessing early childhood memories between the ages of three and four years of age, but anything earlier is normally not a part of adults’ long-term memory. Scientific neurological research on non-human subjects have shown that childhood amnesia can occur in these studies so this has its own implications connected to brain development and memory loss and retention. Today, the modern stance on this 100-year-old subject has increasingly looked at the need for more research on early brain development as the source of childhood amnesia. The incidences of adult recall of early childhood trauma has been cautioned such as cases of sexual abuse that should be substantiated by physical proof.
Debate on the causal factors of childhood amnesia or infantile amnesia has continued since it was first published as a psychological phenomenon over 100 years ago, but study of the literature has provided substantial outcomes on what is known. The theoretical explanation had been posited by Miles in 1893 (Bauer, 2004). The following has reviewed the literature and provides a scientific approach to understanding this condition neurologically as well as other aspects that characterize this subject on memory.
Sheena and Frankland (2012) have explained how psychological/cognitive theories have asserted that the ability for adults maintaining declarative-like and detailed long-term memories has correlated with the development of the sense of self, language as well as theory of mind. At the same time, findings that have resulted from experimentation with animals that had shown symptomatic infantile amnesia has therefore, found the lack of any full explanation in human terms. Biologically, there has been the suggestion that development of protracted postnatal having taken place that take place regions of the human have important factors when connected with memory has interfered with the stability of long-term memory storage. At the same time, science has not provided a specificity that clarifies which aspects of the maturation of the human brain that has emerged as causally related to the occurrence of infantile amnesia.
The hypothesis of infantile amnesia that has been proposed by Sheena and Franklyn (2012) has focused on one specific characteristic of the development of the postnatal human brain development. This has been where the hippocampus has continued adding new neurons. In the case of humans, nonhuman primates as well as rodent newborns this has exhibited as an increased level of hippocampal neurogenesis along with exhibiting the inability for forming any lasting memories. This decline of postnatal neurogenesis levels has corresponded an emergence subjects having the ability to form a long-term stable memory. Sheena and Frankland (2012) have proposed that neurogenesis levels have negatively regulated the ability for forming enduring memories and have likely occurred via the replacement of synaptic connections within circuits of preexisting hippocampal memory.
Consensus has held that adults can access memories from their first 3-4 years of age as has been explained by Bauer (2004). Vitelli (2014) has explained how 2-year-old children typically can answer questions concerning recent events yet, they may often need specific prompting to retrieve these memories. The next four to five years has found that children have become better with recall processing and their description of subjectively important events in their lives. Having reached age of seven or eight has shown that most children have developed relevant autobiographical memories and has occurred with the same rate of normal forgetting that is found in adults.
Recall of early memories that have happened earlier than the age of three or four among children. The older children become the difficulty increases. The external link to childhood amnesia even after decades of research still lacks in any scientific understanding of the causal factors. Prompting children will often result in them recalling early memories, at the same time this is plagued with false memories directly linked to unintentional cuing and leading questions perpetrated by adults. Consequently, the American Psychiatric Association has advised having physical evidence when adults recall abuse linked to early childhood events (Vitelli, 2014).
Vitelli (2014) has explained that the most widely used method that has been applied when testing childhood memories has been linked to a technique connected to the external use of a cue word. The cue word then is followed by the participant asked to think of a specific memory that is associated with this specific word and an estimate of the age they were at the time they had developed this early memory.
The process of recall comparison of different ages, the work done by memory researchers has identified how normal forgetfulness has developed from the age of eight years onward. This has earmarked how childhood amnesia has become well-established and there is little change with time as has been described by Vitelli (2014). Further to Vitelli (2014) this has been exemplified by research comparison between 20-year-old subjects with 70-year-olds via external aspects. The two groups have been asked to recall early childhood events and have shown no significant differences in memory despite the disparity in the passing of time between the two.
Over the past century the number of various explanations that have been emerged have proven hypothetical that had included Freud’s theory that childhood amnesia has been caused by repression of traumatic experiences that had occurred early in the child’s development psychosexually. The growing number of modern theorists have looked at the physiology of the development of the human brain as the primary causal factor of childhood amnesia (as explained earlier). Bauer (2004) has explained that differential rates of forgetting have shown they are apparent in both infancy and very early childhood. This has also sown to carry on through to the preschool years. The likely link to neuro-developmental changes making memories formed in early childhood emerge more vulnerable to failures in both consolidation and storage could therefore be relative to memories that have formed later in a person’s life.
The outcome of the above has provided implications that childhood amnesia is likely linked to neurological development in the brain. The above has suggested that external factors may vary in assisting with recall of early childhood events, but the APA has cautioned that in adult recall of abusive childhood trauma should be substantiated with physical proof.
