Autobiographical Memory & Childhood Amnesia

Memory Distributions into Late Adulthood

- Similar pattern in early childhood, as distribution in young children. Peak from 10-20, then again for very recent past. Reminiscence bump - forming self-concepts, getting to know what you're good at, forming your identity -> lots of memories about what happens to you. Memories start decline after age 20ish. Important transitions in self development from 10-20 Reminiscence bump earlier for women than for men: age 13-14 for women, 15-18 for men (Janssen et al., 2005).

Some evidence for development of self theory

- even if you control for langauge ability - toddlers (19 mos) both self-recognition ability & parents' maternal style contributed unique factors. Autobiographical memory needs both?

Crovitz & Harvey (1979)

- pps to remmeber memories before age 8, for 4hours a week. Problem with retrospective study - can't know if the memories are real. 11,000 memories to age 10. Main finding: steep slope from age 3 to 6/7.

Bauer & colleagues (eg. 2002).

11-24 month olds. Sequence of temporally-ordered actions (2-8 components of events). Sees someone do something, and need to remember the course of events. E.g., "lets make a gong". Steady increase across age in number of components recalled & length of delay before forgetting: 11 month olds can reproduce 2 step thing, 24 months old an 8 step thing. Range of sequence thus increases. 24 months old remember these for as long as 8 months afterwards. Generally performed better if the sequences were not completely arbitrary, but had some relation between them. If given verbal information that helps as well. Similar findings by Hayne et al. (1997) as early as 6 mos.

Cleveland & Reese (2008)

5 1/2 year olds recall events: For events before age 2 - 50% of 51/2-yr-olds' recall accurate. For events after age 2 - 75% accurate.

Neisser (1962): specified the different consequences of various accommodative processes.

Absorption & displacement - later forms of cognitive schemes either absorb earlier ones, or push them into the unsconscious. Later forms of cognitive schemata either absorb the earlier ones completely or push them into the unconscious, leading to total amnesia for infancy. Integration - earlier cognitive schemes become part of newer, adult forms. During integration, older structures become part of the more comprehensive new ones, and leads to only partial loss of early memories or to changes of perspective. Neisser suggested that displacement is most likely to occur when a culture emphasises discontinuity between different phases of development, while integration tends to take place when transitions are gradual and consistent.

Simcock & Hayne (2003)

An interesting experiment carried out by Simcock and Hayne (2003) indicates children's memories about an experience are determined by the language skills available to them at the time of the experience. When 2- to 4-year old children were asked to describe their memories of a unique event (after a retention interval of 6-12 months), they would only use words that were part of their productive vocabulary at the time of the event. Thus, even though the children had learned all the necessary words to describe the event over the retention period, no evidence was found that they could translate their preverbal memories into language at the time of the experiment (Howe & Courage, 2009) (relate to question).

Peterson et al. (2005)

Asked groups of 6-to 9-year-old children, 10- to 13-year-old children, 14- to 16-yearold adolescents, and 17- to 19-year-old adolescents to describe and date their earliest self-nominated personal memory. Found that the age of participants' earliest memories was influenced by the participants' current age. For example, the average age of earliest memory reported by the 6- to 9-year-old children was significantly younger than was the average age of earliest memory of the 10- to 13-year-old children and of the 14- to 16-year-old adolescents. The average age of earliest memory for the 17- to 19-year-old adolescents did not, however, differ from the average age of earliest memory reported by the youngest group of children. Concluded that the boundary of childhood amnesia changes as a function of participants' chronological age at the time of the interview. That is, children who are younger than 10 tend to have younger earliest memories than do children and adolescents who are older than 10. In contrast to other studies conducted with children, Peterson et al. (2005) provides the first suggestion that younger children do not experience childhood amnesia to the same degree as do adults.

Newcombe & Fox (1994):

Children do show some evidence of implicit recognition memory despite lack of explicit memory - 9-10 year olds shown pictures of old school places etc. they'd been to when really young - showed physical repsonses even though they said they didn't remember what was on the pictures - not same as AM, more recognition memories. Supports Cognitive & Social Discontinuity account.

Autobiographical memory

Collection of memories of things that have happened to a person at a specific time and place, e.g. traumatic events, commonplace events, flashbulb memories. Emerges around age 2 & 1/2. A kind of memory that develops around preschool years in particular.

Meltzoff (1988, 1990, 1995)

Deferred Imitation: show infants something & see whether they can imitate it later. Requires child to remember enough about past experience to be able to retrieve it without any outside cues. 9-24 month old children witness novel activities with unfamiliar objects - adult acts weirdly, things children wouldn't spontaneously do - even by 9 months, infants showed memory for object action event - they imitate what the adult did with the toy. But only 24 hours after they saw the adult & object. As age increases, remember more events & remember over longer periods/delays. Possibly as early as 6 weeks?

Age Differences

Depending on how old the participant is when you ask them - get different results. The younger you are, the earlier the memory you can report. Also for single earliest memory - younger for children & adolescents. Children remember early childhood better than adults. Kids & teens have more memories from before age 3 than adults do (Tustin & Hayne, 2010) Younger kids have more memories of earlier events than older kids do Peterson & Wang (2009): Age 8, 11, 14 Peterson et al. (2005): Age 6-9 vs 10-19 - found 6-9 year olds remembered more than 10-19 year olds. Somewhere after 10 not much more change to what you can remember. In the first direct comparison of childhood amnesia in children, adolescents, and adults,

Cohen & Gunz (2002):

East asians more likely to report more 3rd person memories than 1st person memories - memories regarding other people not self, descriptions more about social roles, specific to context, about objective behaviours. But Americans - self, personal attributes rather than social roles. Describe own traits more positivley.

Wang (2001):

Emotion-explaining vs. emotion-criticising style among US vs. Chinese mothers. Asked talk to 3-year olds about 4 events they'd all participated in before, one for sadness, fear, anger, . Causal attributions for why child felt that way etc (US), whether Chinese more emotional-criticising style - what would have been the appropriate way to express yourself in those situations, what is socially acceptable, how you should behave etc. US - more personal, focus more on child's role in the event, Chinese - more focused on the adults/social.

Event Memory

Event memory: infant & toddlers' ability to recall a specific event. How can event memory tell us something about contiunity or disconuity? Deferred or elicited imitation method

Individual Differences - Family

First-born children report earlier memories than later born. Have more time to talk about past events? Children of traditional, high authoritarian parents report later memories Individual differences in the way parents talk to their children about the past lead to individual differences in children's reporting skill. Two parental styles of talking about the past have been identified: high elaborative and low elaborative. The way in which adults talk with children about the past, then, does appear to play an important role in children's developing ability to report autobiographical memories

Role of language in offset of childhood amnesia

Fivush & Nelson (2004): According to this theory, children whose parents discuss the past with them in an elaborative reminiscing style tend to have more and fuller memories, possibly since they are given a good opportunity to rehearse their memories.

Emergence of self & Infantile Amnesia

Howe and Courage (1997) infantile amnesia may rather be the result of the absence or immaturity of a sense of self. Coinciding with the offset of infantile amnesia, the development of the sense of self becomes evident at about 2 years of age. According to this theory, autobiographical memories can only be formed after the infant has developed a cognitive self to whom events that are personally relevant can occur (Baddeley, 2009). "Prior to the articulation of the self, the infant will learn and remember, but these experiences cannot be recognised as specific events, coded with respect to time and place, that happened to a "me"" (Howe and Courage, 1993, p.360). Surely, the presence and development of autobiographical memory in our early years is crucial for our later remembrance of events happening at the time (Baddeley, 2009), but so is also its connection to an individual's sense of self.

Elicited Imitation

In contrast to recognition, recall involves accessing a cognitive structure based in past experience in the ab sence of ongoing perceptual sup port. We engage in recall when we think about what we had for din ner last evening or about the beautiful hotel in which we stayed on our first trip to Italy. Both concep tually and methodologically, the capacity for recall has been linked with the ability to provide a verbal report. Because infants are without language, they were thought to lack this fundamental competence. Testing recall nonverbally -> use elicited imitation. Variation on deferred imitation, argued by Bauer to be a non-verbal analogye to verbal report. Involves using objects to produce an action or action sequence, and then allowing the infant or child to imitate.

Pluralistic Account

Infantile amnesia seems to depict a complex process involving possibly several different memory systems (Meltzhoff, 1995). Despite evidence of neurological immaturity of infant brains, there seems to be little persuasive proof that the infant nervous system would be intrinsically incapable of storing memories - but good enough? Researchers have found both declarative/explicit and nondeclarative/ implicit memory systems to appear functional very early in life, and there is furthermore a lot of evidence indicating infants to be relatively good at remembering events that have happened to them (Howe and Courage, 2009). Thus, if problems with storage is insufficient to explain infantile amnesia, the answer leans towards a problem of retrieving the memories.

Is language the answer?

Insofar as language could be an important contributor to infantile amnesia, it is probably not necessary for either long term memory storage or retrieval. If that was the case, we should remember events happening at the same time as when we started using language, but in reality we remember even earlier events (Meltzhoff, 1995).

Wang study of the schematic knowledge of emotion in American and Chinese 3-6 year olds.

Interviewed Caucasian-American and Chinese children. Presented 20 short stories with a protagonist of their age, gender, and ethnicity, and were asked to identify the feeling states of the protagonist by choosing among faces showing happy, sad, scared, or angry emotions. Children's mothers and a second group of adults read the same stories and judged the protagonist's emotions in the same fashion. Based on the proportion of concorant judgements between children and adults in each culture, findings showed that American children had a better grasp of emotion knowledge and made more rapid progress in such knowledge than their Chinese peers. This earlier acquisition of adult emotion schemata in American children should help them understand the emotional meanings of events in a more mature way, and hence to organise their personal memories more efficiently for long-term retention.

Peterson & Rideout (1998):

Investigated children's verbal recall for hospitalisation. Three groups of children: younger toddlers who were 18 months of age or younger; older toddlers who were more than 18 months of age at the time of their injuries and who simultaneously could not verbally report or narrativize those experiences; and (c) 2-year-old narrators who could verbally describe their injury experiences. Tracked the children's verbal recall longitudinally for l'/2 to 2 years. Children's recall of these experiences was tracked at three different points of time: 6 months, 12 months, and either 18 or 24 months after their injuries. Findings: the likelihood of long-term recall and reporting seems to be related to other factors, including the child's age and whether the child is able to narrativize their experiences at the time. Children who were no more than 1V2 years of age did not seem to be able to report their experiences long term, whereas children just a few months older were much more likely to do so. In other words, the fact that the children were very upset at the time of their injuries did not insulate these experiences in special ways from forgetting—the children still could not verbally report them much later.

Wang (2004)

Less focus on self in Chinese than US children's memories (Wang, 2004) examined childhood recollection and self-description in young Chinese adults who came from either only-child or multiple child families. Compared with sibling adults, only-child Chinese showed a greater 'individual-orientation' where they described themselves in more self-focused terms (e.g., I am short, smart and ambitious) provided earliest memories that were from almost 9 months earlier and were more focused on their personal roles and experiences. . Early upbringing thus appears to shape how the self is organised and, further, how personal experiences are remembered. In addition to requiring that a conceptual self be in place, the offset of infantile amnesia may be facilitated or hindered by particular characteristics of self sustained by divergent socialisation practices.

Simcock & Hayne, 2003

Magic Shrinking Machinge (Simcock & Hayne, 2003) - 2 to 4 year olds. Observe machine that shrinks doll - observe, come back 24 hrs later, given objects. These studies show that very young children can remember a one-time event. Younger children had trouble describing the events, greater verbal ability among older children -> verbal ability increase as they get older - once switch to language/verbal storing & recall might be difficult to retrieve the older memories. Does language cause major cognitive discontinuity or reorganisation?

Peterson & Rideout (1998)

Memory for traumatic injury. Interview after 6, 12, and 24 mos - groups 13-18mos, 20-25mos, 26-33 mos. Group differences in verbalisation: When interviewed - none of the younger ones could verbalise the event. About 3rd of info correctly recalled by older infants. Youngest no at all or fragments or central components. Having ability to verbalise about event at time it happen was crucial factor for them to remember the event 2 years later and 4 years later. Thus, effect of verbal ability at time of event on later recall.

Han et al. (1998)

North American vs. Korean mother-child reminiscing. Conversational styles used - North Americans 3x more talk about previous events than korean. Adults report earlier AM memories. Influence of exprerience over time.

Welch-Ross (2000):

Organised self-concept facilitated children's recall. Preiminary findings showing that the development of an organised self-concept facilitates children's recall of past events.

High elaborative vs. low elaborative

Parents in the high-elaborative category provide a large amount of detailed information about past events regardless of how much information children are providing. Highly elaborative parents accept and expand on the pieces of memory information children provide. In contrast, parents with a low-elaborative style tend to repeat their questions over and over in an attempt to get a specific answer from the child. The high-elaborative style is positively associated with children's provisions of memory information, both concurrently and longitudinally (McCabe & Peterson, 1991; Reese et al., 1993). Reese et al. found that an elaborative style displayed by mothers when children were 40 months old uniquely predicted an elaborative style for their children's memory talk at later ages. The way in which adults talk with children about the past, then, does appear to play an important role in children's developing ability to report autobiographical memories

Cognitive & Social Discontinuity

Presented by Schachtel (1947) and Neisser (1962). Infantile amnesia is attributed to shifts in cognitive functioning that are concominant with development towards adult modes of thought. In conformity with societal conventions that impose different responsibilities, values, and customs on adults than on children, early memory schemata must accomodate to adult modes of thought as the child grows up. This discontinuity in the 'mental tools' required for processing, representing, organising and retrieving event information makes the reconstruction of early childhood memories almost impossible. Consequently, early memories are blocked or obscured, as adults do not have the 'suitable receptacles' to access them. The shifts of cognitive schemata occur not only in the realm of sensation, perception, and language, but in the domain of emotion as well.

Infantile/Childhood Amnesia

Scarcity of adults' memories for events that occurred before 4th birthday. The common inability to remember autobiographical experiences from the first years of life. Memories from earliest years of life are no longer accessible to adult recall through conscious, language-based probes. Whether these memories are lost, blocked, or not encoded (properly) in the first place is a question of debate, and theoretical views seem to hold different opinions on this issue.

Language Acquisition

Since infants have limited verbal skills during the period of infantile amnesia (Baddeley, 2009), the development of language could arguably contribute to infantile amnesia. Largely, this is supported by the fact that the emergence of memories corresponds to a period of rapid language development (Fenson et al., 1994). As children develop the ability to encode information in a linguistic format both the quality and durability of a representation will increase (Hayne, 2002). They will also be able to use language-based retrieval cues, which will help them to successfully retrieve a particular memory in an increased range of different situations (Hayne, 2003). When language is limited, however, infants fail to store autobiographical memories in a way that their adult selves can decode and understand (Hayne and Rovee-Collier, 1995).

Memory Distributions

Systematic studies of autobiographical memories indeed indicate a scarcity of memories before the age of five Rubin (2000) - meta-analysis. When reporting on memories that happened before the age of 11, only 1% of adults report memories of events occuring before the age of three.

Individual Differences - Event Type

The events that people remember from their early childhood are those that were somehow very salient and meaningful, and in particular these early memories tend to be accompanied by strong emotions. Deaths, family moves before age 3 not recalled very often. But, hospitalisations, sibling births recalled more often. Sheingold & Tenney (1982): interviewed 4, 8 & 12 year olds about the birth of a sibling. They found that if the sibling had been born when the participant was younger than 4, regardless of the participant's current age, he or she had very little recollection of the events surrounding the birth. Traumatic experiences: hospitalisations, serious accidents and injuries recalled very often.

Howe & Courage (2003):

Toddlers with selfrecognition both use more personal pronouns & have better event memory.

Haden et al 1997

Two different conversational styles. Parents fall into these categories: Elaborative (or high-elaborative): Tend to have lenghty memory conversations with kids, lots of detail, rich embellished details, invites child to construct story with them. Child-centred. Elaborate, expand. Ask further questions to elicit more detail about event. If necessary, correct the details. Pragmatic (or low-elaborative): Short, directive conversations, little embellishment, tries to elicit correct answer more often. More like memory test - to say right thing than to hear story, might repeat question over and over again. Not spend much time elaborating, little embellishment, little details. Parent-centred.

Individual Differences - Culture

Wang, 2003: some cultures: report AM later. North American earlier than Chinese & Korean, but Maori about 10 months earlier than North American (Wang, 2003 - good paper, read. Good for culture differences). Maori > North American > Chinese & Korean European & Caucasian-American adults can consciously remember events they experienced at about age 3.5. Koreans, Chinese & overseas Asians - can consciousnly remember events they experienced at about age 4. Content of memories: markedly different across cultures. Wang (2001): American adults: reported childhood memories tend to be voluminous, specific, self-focused, and emotionally elaborate. Chinese adults: reported childhood memories often skeletal, generic, centred on relationships, and emotionally unexpressive. --> even at preschool age, American children tend to have autobiographical accounts that are more elaborate, more specific, more self-focused, and less socially oriented than do their Korean and Chinese peers.

Wang - cross cultural data raises questions.

Wang: it is in the process of cultural symbolic, material, and discursive interactions that autobiographical memory emerges as both an individual expression and a cultural product. Reconsideration of infantile amnesia from a cross-cultural perspective suggests that while the basic mechanisms and contributing factors may be universal, the specific ways in which these mechanisms and factors are manifested differ qualitatively across cultures.A theoretical approach that takes the larger cultural context into account can help us undestand this lon-standing puzzle.

Individual differences - Gender

Women report earlier and more memories than men. Retrieve memories more quickly. Events associated with strong emotions by oneself or someone else around you. Mullen (1994) found gender-related and culture-related differences in the age of earliest memories. She found that female participants reported younger earliest memories than did male participants and that Caucasian adults reported younger earliest memories than did Asian adults. Although these data have traditionally been interpreted as gender- and culture-related differences in the boundary of childhood amnesia (similar to the interpretation of the data reported here), they might also reflect gender-related and culture-related differences in the threshold that participants use to select a memory in the first place.

Harley & Reese (1999)

conducted longitudinal studies to empirically test the ontogenetic connection between the emergence of the cogntiive self suggested by Howe and Courage and the acquisition of personal event memory. Compared Sociolinguistic vs. Cognitive Self accounts. Assessed self-recognition, maternal reminiscing style, & children's memory from 19-32 mos. They found that individual differences in self-recognition skill at 19 months predicted the abilities of 2 1/2 year olds to report autobiographical events and to share memories with others. Both self-recognition and maternal style independently predicted memory.

Tustin & Hayne (2010):

developed a new Timeline procedure to directly compare the early memories reported by children, adolescents, and adults. Overall, the proportion of memories reported before the age of 3 years was greater for the children and adolescents relative to the adults. In addition, the single earliest memory reported by children and adolescents was at a younger age than that reported by adults. In fact, the earliest memories reported by the children and adolescents, but not the adults, were significantly younger than the traditional 3 1⁄2-year-old boundary of childhood amnesia.

Fivush & Hamond (1990)

event at 2 1/2, interviews after 6 weeks & 14 mos, children provide different (accurate) details at different times. Suggest once they've practiced this skill .. kids can remember personally meaningful events once they've got this narrative skill. Evidence for socio-linguistic account.

Leichtman et al.

findings indicate important cultural differences regarding this theory. Mothers in Western cultures were found to talk in a much more elaborative and emotional way than mothers from Eastern cultures, which could also explain why adults from Eastern cultures have a later age of their first autobiographical memory than Western adults (Pillemer, 1998).

Reese et al.:

longitudinal studies to empirically test the ontogenetic connection between the emergence of the cognitive self suggested by Howe and Courage and the acquisition of personal event memory. Found that individual differences in self-recognition skill at 19 months predicted the abilities of 2 1/2 year olds to report autobiographical events and to share memories with others. However, findings from a follow-up study indicated that this effect was in fact moderated by other factors such as maternal reminiscing style and children's initial language skill.

Bruce et al. (2005):

memory fragments (no context) originate earlier than the first full event memory - 3.3 vs 4 years. Concluded end of childhood amnesia characterised by earliest memory fragments, not event memories.

Hudson (1990)

more scaffolding by parents at 2, more independent contributions at 2 1/2. Initially narratives heavily scaffolded with parents, later kids play with them more and make own contributions. Evidence for socio-liguistic account.

Strange et al. (2008):

over 3 interviews, recall 6 events, 5 true, one false. Some told they happened when they were 2, others when they were 10. If event was true, they remembered more factual details when 10. Adults told age 2 memories, more likely than age 10 group to report it to be true. Thus, adults more susceptible to false memories if told event occurred during period of childhood amnesia.

Wang (2001a):

selectivity of information processing and representation may affect the content and accessibility of memory for autobiographical events over the long term. Caucasian-American average age at earliest memory was almost 6 months earlier than that of Chinese college students, and Americans reported voluminous, speccific, self-focused, and emotionally elaborate memories, and placed emphaiss on individual attributes in describing themselves. Chinese: brief accounts of earliest experiences centring on collective activities, general routines, and emotionally neutral events, included great nr of social roles and group membership in their self-descriptions. Thus, an independet self seems to be linked with the early establishment of an elaborate, specific, emotionally charged, self-focused autobiographical history, whereas an interdependent self is linked with the later establishment of a skeletal, generic, emotionally unexpressive relationcentred autoiographical history.

Carver & Bauer, 1999:

tested 9-month-olds' recall of two-step sequences after a 1-month delay. After 1 month, the infants produced more actions from the events to which they had been exposed than from new, control events. However, only 45% of the infants evidenced ordered recall (i.e., performed the actions in the order in which they had been modeled).