Infantile Amnesia Across the Years: A 2-Year Follow-up of Children’s Earliest Memories

Peterson, Carole; Warren, Kelly L.; Short, Megan

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01597.x

Cited by 106 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Peterson, Warren, and Short (2011) interviewed children 4 to 13 years of age about their earliest memories. Two years later, they asked the same children to once again report their earliest memories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The onset of childhood amnesia in childhood: A prospective investigation of the course and determinants of forgetting of early-life events

Bauer

Larkina

2013

Memory

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The present research was an examination of the onset of childhood amnesia and how it relates to maternal narrative style, an important determinant of autobiographical memory development. Children and their mothers discussed unique events when the children were 3 years of age. Different subgroups of children were tested for recall of the events at ages 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 years. At the later session, they were interviewed by an experimenter about the events discussed 2 to 6 years previously with their mothers (early-life events). Children ages 5, 6, and 7 remembered 60% or more of the early-life events. In contrast, children ages 8 and 9 years remembered fewer than 40% of the early-life events. Overall maternal narrative style predicted children's contributions to mother-child conversations at age 3 years; it did not have cross-lagged relations to memory for early-life events at ages 5 to 9 years. Maternal deflections of the conversational turn to the child predicted the amount of information children later reported about the early-life events. The findings have implications for our understanding of the onset of childhood amnesia and the achievement of an adult-like distribution of memories in the school years. They highlight the importance of forgetting processes in explanations of the amnesia.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The onset of childhood amnesia in childhood: A prospective investigation of the course and determinants of forgetting of early-life events

Bauer

Larkina

2013

Memory

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show abstract

“…Early reports involving child subjects were retrospective-they asked what was retained from childhood, but not what was lost. As a result, though the possibility that memory trace vulnerability was part of the explanation of childhood amnesia had been implicated theoretically (Bauer, 2007(Bauer, , 2008Olson & Newcombe, 2014;Peterson, Warren, & Short, 2011;Tustin & Hayne, 2010), there has been little opportunity to evaluate its role empirically.…”

Section: The Vulnerability Of Memory Traces Declines Over Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The psychology of intelligence analysis: Drivers of prediction accuracy in world politics.

Mellers¹,

Stone²,

Atanasov³

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

137

130

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This article extends psychological methods and concepts into a domain that is as profoundly consequential as it is poorly understood: intelligence analysis. We report findings from a geopolitical forecasting tournament that assessed the accuracy of more than 150,000 forecasts of 743 participants on 199 events occurring over 2 years. Participants were above average in intelligence and political knowledge relative to the general population. Individual differences in performance emerged, and forecasting skills were surprisingly consistent over time. Key predictors were (a) dispositional variables of cognitive ability, political knowledge, and openmindedness; (b) situational variables of training in probabilistic reasoning and participation in collaborative teams that shared information and discussed rationales (Mellers, Ungar, et al., 2014); and (c) behavioral variables of deliberation time and frequency of belief updating. We developed a profile of the best forecasters; they were better at inductive reasoning, pattern detection, cognitive flexibility, and open-mindedness. They had greater understanding of geopolitics, training in probabilistic reasoning, and opportunities to succeed in cognitively enriched team environments. Last but not least, they viewed forecasting as a skill that required deliberate practice, sustained effort, and constant monitoring of current affairs. A t APA, we understand how challenging it can be for you to stay abreast of the latest and best academic research on psychology. Disciplines Finance and Financial Management | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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Section: The Vulnerability Of Memory Traces Declines Over Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Peterson et al (2011) interviewed children 4 to 13 years of age about their earliest memories. Two years later, they asked the same children to once again report their earliest memories.…”

Section: The Vulnerability Of Memory Traces Declines Over Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A complementary processes account of the development of childhood amnesia and a personal past.

Bauer¹

2015

Psychological Review

131

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Personal-episodic or autobiographical memories are an important source of evidence for continuity of self over time. Numerous studies conducted with adults have revealed a relative paucity of personal-episodic or autobiographical memories of events from the first 3 to 4 years of life, with a seemingly gradual increase in the number of memories until approximately age 7 years, after which an adult distribution has been assumed. Historically, this so-called infantile amnesia or childhood amnesia has been attributed either to late development of personal-episodic or autobiographical memory (implying its absence in the early years of life) or to an emotional, cognitive, or linguistic event that renders early autobiographical memories inaccessible to later recollection. However, neither type of explanation alone can fully account for the shape of the distribution of autobiographical memories early in life. In contrast, the complementary processes account developed in this article acknowledges early, gradual development of the ability to form, retain, and later retrieve memories of personally relevant past events, as well as an accelerated rate of forgetting in childhood relative to adulthood. The adult distribution of memories is achieved as (a) the quality of memory traces increases, through addition of more, better elaborated, and more tightly integrated personal-episodic or autobiographical features; and (b) the vulnerability of mnemonic traces decreases, as a result of more efficient and effective neural, cognitive, and specifically mnemonic processes, thus slowing the rate of forgetting. The perspective brings order to an array of findings from the adult and developmental literatures.

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Infantile Amnesia Across the Years: A 2-Year Follow-up of Children’s Earliest Memories

Cited by 106 publications

References 43 publications

The onset of childhood amnesia in childhood: A prospective investigation of the course and determinants of forgetting of early-life events

The onset of childhood amnesia in childhood: A prospective investigation of the course and determinants of forgetting of early-life events

The psychology of intelligence analysis: Drivers of prediction accuracy in world politics.

A complementary processes account of the development of childhood amnesia and a personal past.

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