Tag Archives: Infantile Amnesia

Childhood Amnesia: false memories

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Being in my early adulthood, it is very difficult for me to recall memories from my childhood. This is referred to as childhood amnesia, where the older you get you do not have the ability to retrieve majority of memories before the ages of three or four. It is contributed to parts in your brain dealing with memories, such as the hippocampus.

You know those memories of when you’re really little? You can remember them perfectly from your viewpoint but are they really yours? We all have at least one. Mine is when I was about two years old in the winter. It had just snowed the night before so my older brother and sister got a snow day. My mother took us all out front to play in the snow. I had never seen snow before and didn’t realize the severity of the cold on my bare skin. So like a genius I remove my gloves to touch it and eat it. I’m immediately freezing with bright red hands. I turned back to my mother trying to get her to go back inside with me, my excuse being, “I’m veezin!” I couldn’t pronounce my F’s or G’s yet.

I remember this scene with such clarity it had to be from first hand experience. A few years ago, my mom broke out the home movies from my childhood. It turns out that my exact experience and memory was on one of those VHS tapes. I saw the entire scene unfold but from my mother’s perspective behind the video camera. Those were never my memories. They were adopted memories from our home movies. Because of childhood amnesia, it proves that these memories couldn’t have possibly have been mine. There is a sub-section of childhood amnesia called false memories where you subconsciously implant stories or videos from your childhood to substitute like they’re your actual memories. This is what I had done with my home movie of me in the snow when I was two years old.

Implantation of Memory Caused by Infantile Amnesia

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I remember I was around two or three years old and my family and I were at a birthday party for a family friend.  Being as young as I was, I was waddling around the party minding my own business and just seeing what was going on.  I started walking when I was very young, and the adventurist in me had come out yet again at this party.  At some point, I made my way to where my mom was sitting, but she had gotten up momentarily.  The chairs being used at this party were folding metal chairs and I had put my hand down near the back, but my mom did not see this.  Somehow, when she sat back down, the chair folded and split my finger down the nail.

Seems crazy, right?  Well I agree, but it is true.  At least, it is what my parents told me. My paternal grandparents keep “Baby Books” of all the grandchildren, and I remember going through mine around the age of 12.  As I flipped through the pages, I paused, took a double take of the one photograph because I did not believe what my sensory memory had seen. What I thought I had seen the first time was proven by my double take.  I saw a picture of me, around age three, being held by my father with a thick heap of gauze wrapped around my ring finger.  Being caught off-guard and extremely confused, I called my mom into the room and asked her what happened.  That was when she told me about the party.  Very simply Infantile Amnesia can explain the reason I had no memory of what happened. Infantile Amnesia is defined in our textbook as the inability to retrieve memories from much before age three, but is it not true that we are supposed to remember something traumatic? At least this is the claim made by many people, but I do not agree. As traumatic as this event seems, I do not actually remember any of it occurring.

I am able to write about this event today because my parents had implanted the memory into my mind.  After explaining what had happened, I was extremely shocked.  How could I not remember such terrifying moment?  I was too young to make a memory out of it.  After my parents told me what had happened, they told me to look down at my ring finger, so I did.  Going behind my nail, I noticed a scar, and then I was really shocked because I could not believe I never noticed it before.  I can retell this story to people no problem, but it is not from my own memory.  The only reason I can recall this event is because my parents told me about it and implanted the memory into my mind.

**Definition of Infantile Amnesia found in Psychology textbook

Ciccarelli, Saundra K., and J. Noland White. Psychology. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006. Print.

 

 

Blog #2 Infantile Amnesia

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Blog Assignment #2
In class, we discussed the different types of memory. There’s sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. When we learned about long-term memory, we learned that the capacity for it is relatively unlimited. However, when we learned about infant memory, we saw that it is hard to trace back every single memory before the age of three. There are memories from before that age, however, it is just very difficult to retrieve. Another term to describe this is infantile amnesia. Between the ages of one and two our brain structures that are involved in memory storage are not fully developed.
I was born in New York City and lived in an apartment until I was around the age of two. We moved to New Jersey and have lived there ever since. A lot of times, my family will bring up moments from the old apartment we used to live in, but I have no memory of it at all. To me, the house I lived in when we decided to move is the only place I am familiar with. This is because I was far too young to be able to recall any memories from living in New York City. If my parents told me about a specific event from when we lived there, I would have to believe that it actually happened because I do not know otherwise. When we go into the city and walk around the old neighborhood, I would be shown the building I used to live in and the park I used to play in and the nearby restaurants my family would go to. To me, it all seemed new and unfamiliar even though I had been to all my places my parents told me about. My brother, on the other hand, is older than me and might have a better memory of the old apartment. He was around the age of three or four when we moved. His memory at the time was more developed that mine so he might be able to remember certain events from living in New York City, although he might not remember all of it. My earliest memory comes from living in New Jersey and going to preschool in my town. My brother’s earliest memory could have come from living in the old apartment. As we have learned, the average person’s earliest memory is from when they are about three years old. I will never be able to remember the early year or so of my life and living in the apartment in New York City.