Childhood memory

Childhood memory refers to memories formed during childhood. Among its other roles, memory functions to guide present behaviour and to predict future outcomes. Memory in childhood is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the memories formed and retrieved in late adolescence and the adult years. Childhood memory research is relatively recent in relation to the study of other types of cognitive processes underpinning behaviour. Understanding the mechanisms by which memories in childhood are encoded and later retrieved has important implications in many areas. Research into childhood memory includes topics such as childhood memory formation and retrieval mechanisms in relation to those in adults, controversies surrounding infantile amnesia and the fact that adults have relatively poor memories of early childhood, the ways in which school environment and family environment influence memory, and the ways in which memory can be improved in childhood to improve overall cognition, performance in school, and well-being, both in childhood and in adulthood.

Childhood memories have several unique qualities. The experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Endel Tulving refers to memory as “mental time travel”, a process unique to humans. However, early memories are notoriously sparse from the perspective of an adult trying to recall his or her childhood in depth. Explicit knowledge of the world is a form of declarative memory, which can be broken down further into semantic memory, and episodic memory, which encompasses both autobiographical memory and event memory. Most people have no memory prior to three years of age, and few memories between three and six years of age, as verified by analysis of the forgetting curve in adults recalling childhood memories.

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