Research Paper on Childhood Amnesia: A Theoretical Explanation

Introduction

People are normally affected by the fact that they cannot recall specific memories and events from their childhood. Every person has undergone specific episodes of events during infancy and childhood age at different times in specific places under different emotions underlying specific experiences. This inability to recall this series of events is termed as infantile amnesia or childhood amnesia, a term that was initially introduced by Sigmund Freud. In this case, the adults are unable or find difficulties of recalling events in their childhood age of below two years and also at their age below ten years. Nonetheless, it is viewed that at the age of four to ten years, adults have the ability to retain and recall a few memories. Therefore, from the discussion of many researchers and scholars childhood amnesia is related to the forgetting of various events that occurred in childhood age, and has been discussed with arguments of the underdeveloped brain for infants, hence lack of ability to retrieve different memories. The explanations described in the ideologies of neurological, cognitive psychology neurobiological, language, and developmental psychology gives a clear depiction that childhood amnesia is a theoretical explanation. This is as discussed below.

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Childhood amnesia can be described by the theoretical explanation of cognitive psychology of memory. This holds the concept of autobiographical memories being distributed by the life span. This is an idea outlining how lifespan retrieval curve that can be drawn for adults gives a reflection of vital periods of one's development. This explanation describes how memories are recalled in relation to the age of people at the encoding of the recalled experiences. The curve represents three main stages, the childhood amnesia period of age below five years, reminiscence bump period of ten to thirty years, and the recency period (Barrouillet 2015). Further research conducted and date representations show the robustness of the curve. Through this explanation, we realize that it was at the childhood amnesia period that the normal autobiographical memories of episodic childhood events were accessible.

Another theoretical explanation of childhood amnesia is the theory of neurological that was discussed by Piaget. According to him, through his investigations and research, he came up with the concept that brain structures had to recall memories and further form representations. This was an important process in the formation of episodic memories. He outlined that this process developed at the age of eighteen to twenty-four months and therefore, childhood amnesia which he described as the lack of ability for the formation, retaining and recalling eventful memories was as a result of prolonged development of these intricate processes. Therefore, if there was extended brain structure development until the period of two years, then the two-year child could find extreme difficulties in remembering any event in their first infancy year (Schwartz 2016). Therefore, according to neurological theory, childhood amnesia is associated with poor development of neurological of the brains for the infant. This hinders the process of creation of autobiographical memories on long term basis due to the fact that the key neuroanatomy memory structures, which include the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus are unable to develop into maturity during the early ages of below three or four years.

However, the neurological theory fails to give a clear account for childhood amnesia since it does not offer an explanation of the preceding age after four years. Furthermore, the theory does not address the instance of why children do not show infantile amnesia. Nonetheless, children of three years have been found to remember events in their lives that took place when they were one or two years. This shows that neurological structures in the brain have developed. Hence they can remember events that occurred even when they were one year old.

The concept of language development is another explanation theory of childhood amnesia. This theory holds the idea of young children lacking a complete and developed language as a cause of infantile amnesia because children usually lack enough language capacity that is capable of encoding autobiographical memories. In this theory, there is a depiction of the relationship between the language development stage in children and their respective age whereby they can retrieve their infancy and childhood memories, that is the age of three to four years (Staniloiu, Markowitsch, and Kordon 2018). The explanation of this theory is that verbal performance is important in autobiographical memories in that, children with better verbal performance, or high language ability are able to express more when interviewed are able to describe memories from their childhood events as they have good language and knowledge to explain them.

On the other hand, children with less verbal ability are not able to effectively describe their infancy memories. Therefore, both adults and children can effectively recall memories of the events that took place at their language development stage, which is an age of three/four years. According to his theory, language enhances children to reorganize their memorable experiences and communicate with others, hence improving awareness of past events develop cognitive self-thought. The hypothesis of this theory further makes a comparison of parents and children discussions of past memories in an elaborative and thorough manner with those who did not to find out the huge number and a smaller number of memory events respectively (Flood 1978). Therefore, the lack of communication hinders the processing of past memories. However, this theory is criticized by the ideas of birds not communicating but still recalled their locations of their cached food types as discussed by Clayton, Dickinson and Griffiths who quoted, "If the ability to recall events post 24 months is due to language development it would be expected for animals- who lack language-to not form memories at all"

The neurobiological theory describes the concept of neural substrates called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is a neurotransmitter inhibitor is influential in the retrieval of childhood memories. The theory presents a concept of GABA performance being more effective in childhood stage that at the adult stage (Broman et al. 1997). However, if the gamma-aminobutyric acid is more influential at childhood stage in the process of recalling the past memories, then children at their childhood would recall every event in their infancy, which is not the case.

Conclusion

In conclusion, childhood amnesia remains a theoretical explanation. This is as per the description from the above theories. All the theories clearly depict the concept of childhood amnesia cause and provide different supportive argumentative ideas. However, the cause remains under uncertainty because the theories provide effective evidence that is supportive, but the explanations face contradictories and criticism that weakens them. Nonetheless, the explanations of the theories provide a significant view of childhood amnesia and its cause. It is clear that wide range of research and improvements are required on childhood amnesia cause not only by a discussion of biological and developmental theories but through considerations and research on other factors that influence human minds.

References

Barrouillet, P., (2015). Theories of cognitive development: From Piaget to today.

Broman, M., Rose, A. L., Hotson, G., & Casey, C. M. (1997). Severe anterograde amnesia with onset in childhood as a result of anoxic encephalopathy. Brain: a journal of neurology, 120(3), 417-433.

Flood, J. F., Bennett, E. L., Orme, A. E., Rosenzweig, M. R., & Jarvik, M. E. (1978). Memory: Modification of anisomycin-induced amnesia by stimulants and depressants. Science, 199(4326), 324-326.

Schwartz, B. L., (2016). Memory: Foundations and applications. Sage Publications.

Staniloiu, A., Markowitsch, H. J., & Kordon, A. (2018). Psychological causes of autobiographical amnesia: a study of 28 cases. Neuropsychologia, 110, 134-147.

Wang, Q., & Gulgoz, S., (2019). New perspectives on childhood memory: introduction to the special issue.