Infantile Amnesia – Speculating a State of Childhood Absent Mindedness
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Infantile Amnesia
Speculating a state of childhood absent mindedness
Infantile Amnesia is failure for recapturing the autobiographical events from infancy, typically beginning with the onset of birth until the age of 3 or 4. Unlike the other categorized amnesias, infantile amnesia transpires in all adults and its simply an inability to recall declarative memories occurring in infancy. Some have tried to evoke previous infantile memories, insisting that they are entirely aware of former events such as their 1st birthday. Research studies suggest this type of mental recapping is basically ones semantic encoding for a previous event, rather than being an encoding for episodic (autobiographical) memory.
Before I proceed any further, it is important to note the research has yet to fully provide explanations for validating if an amnesic period truly exists during infantile development. The example provided above is just one of the many research assumptions hypothesizing failures of episodic processing during infancy. The following inclusions will reflect additional theories and personal speculations for the causes of infantile amnesia.
Other studies have argued infants lack a sense of self, confirming why “we cant remember particular events happening to us.” Memories therefore are structured when one has a sense of self and an understanding that the self exists in time (Fivush &Nelson 2004). This can possibly be associated with the critical period for acquiring language, being that an infant cant possibly cultivate a sense of self without it being interpreted. According to Elizabeth Loftus, the onset of language acquisition plays an essential role for the causes of Infantile Amnesia. With language remaining impaired until infants reach a certain age for producing language, infants have vague interpretations for autobiographical events. This is due to an infants inability to comprehend or place deep meanings to their experiences, affecting memory processes of events previous to acquiring language. Language skills are therefore imperative for storage of episodic memories.
Certainly, producing speech is vital for establishing a sense of self and meanings behind experienced events. However, it is uncertain if language impairments cause infantile amnesia. To say underdeveloped language inhibits memory storage is also saying infants remain unaffected from previous experiences with their caregivers. Of course this is irrelevant, considering influences from environmental stimuli do affect an infants development. Mothers, for example, who are unresponsive to their babies (by inhibiting their sense of care or preventing them from exploring the environment), can lead their babies to developing possible emotional abnormalities later in life. Take for instance, the case of Genie She was