Why Can't We Remember Events from Our Early Childhood

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June 18, 2012 Assignment #2 PSY 1240 Why Can’t We Remember Events from Our Early Childhood? Why can’t people remember events from early childhood? According to Gabriel A. Radvansky (2006), several explanations are put forth on why people are unable to remember/recall memories and/or events from their childhood. One of the first to study infantile amnesia was Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that everyone’s psychological issues were a result of repressed sexual thoughts, however, Ecacott (1999) states that “ Freud’s description was largely anecdotal. It was not until later that that objective evidence of childhood amnesia was gathered.” (Ecacott, p. 46) Another explanation of childhood amnesia that has been discussed is from the neurological viewpoint, believing that young children’s brains are not fully developed and are unable to store the vast, detailed memories and therefore these specific memories are not able to be recalled at a later date. Radvansky (2006), also discusses the importance of language acquisition, in saying that “infantile amnesia reflects an inability to organize information into coherent life narrative, which can then be used to help retrieval.” (Radvansky, p. 141) The emergence of self theory (or the theory of self) looks at the concept of infants developing a self identity. This allows the infant to begin viewing themselves as “I” and “me” and this concept of self identity continues to expand as the child ages. Throughout many articles, discussion took place around the idea that traumatic events such as sexual assault, mental, emotional and physical assault impacted what a person could remember of their childhood and more specifically of their earliest memory. Because of the negative memory associated with these assaults, the retrieval of particular memories would be difficult if not impossible for children and/or adults to remember

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