Infant Memory Works From Very Early
Some argue it's impossible for us to remember anything much from before around two to four years of age. Others think our memories can go way back - perhaps even to before birth. The question of 'infantile amnesia' is thorny because it's hard to test whether adults' earliest memories are real or imagined.
What psychologists have done, though, is examine the emergence of memory in our first few years with a series of now classic experiments. If memories really can be laid down early in life then it is certainly possible in theory for adults to remember very early experiences.
Getting a kick out of kicking
One classic experiment, devised by Professor Carolyn Rovee-Collier (now at Rutgers University) and colleagues in the 1960s, provides us an insight into what infants can remember. This method has produced some great evidence about how and when infants' memories develops.
In their experiment, Rovee and Rovee (1969) had infants of between 9 and 12 weeks lay comfortably in their cribs at home looking up at a mobile covered with brightly coloured wooden figures.
The more the little kids kick, the more of a kick they get from the mobile.A cord was then attached to their foot connecting it to the mobile. This meant that if the infants kicked out the mobile would move. And, if they kicked out hard, the wooden figures would bump into each other and make a pleasant knocking sound. The more the little kids kick, the more of a kick they get from the mobile.
If you're starting to get a whiff of Pavlov and his salivating dog then you're on the right lines. This experiment is all about seeing if an infant can be conditioned to kick their foot to make the mobile move. Researchers first measure infants' baseline levels of kicking (with mobile unattached), then compare this to kicking that produces an exciting response (wow, the mobile is moving!).
What Rovee and Rovee (1969) found was that even infants as young as 8 weeks old could learn the association between kicking and the mobile movement. This learning was still evident over a 45-55 minutes period.
Early memories
While this initial finding is fairly modest, the use of this procedure has led to all sorts of new findings about infants' memories. For example, subsequent studies have later substituted a different mobile for the original to see if the infants can spot the difference, thereby testing whether or not they really remember.
In one experiment infants only 8-weeks-old were trained with the mobile over a period of 3 days for 9 minutes each day. Twenty-four hours later the infants only kicked at above their baseline levels when the same mobile was above their heads. This showed they remembered the particular mobile they had been trained with and not just any old mobile. It was an especially exciting finding because it had previously been thought that long-term memory (and 24 hours is long-term for psychologists) didn't emerge until as late as 8 or 9 months.
Our memory systems actually work quite well from very early on.Because of this experiment and others like it, we now know much more about infant memory. Our memory systems actually work quite well from very early on. Infants' memories also seems to work in much the same way as adult memories - it's just that infant memories are much more fragile.
Carolyn Rovee-Collier argues it is doubtful whether infantile amnesia really exists (Rovee-Collier, 1999). It certainly appears our brains can lay down long-term memories even in the first year of life. The reason it is unusual to retain memories from that time into adulthood is probably because of the limited capacity of our early memory systems and the intervening years during which we inevitably forget.
» This is part of a series on 10 crucial child psychology studies. Read more on the emergence of self-concept, learning, attachment, social behaviour, theory of mind, object permanence, language, play and knowledge.
[Image credit: dolanh]
References
Rovee, C. K., & Rovee, D. T. (1969). Conjugate Reinforcement of Infant Exploratory Behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 8, 33-39.
Rovee-Collier, C. (1999). The Development of Infant Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(3), 80-85.
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completely disagree. I think all that is happening is that the baby's brain thinks that the mobile in question is actually part of their body. This is not as silly as it sounds, because lets face it, our brains don't actually know where the body ends and the real world begins. The brain is just an organ trapped in a hard dark enclosure with data lines for input and output. The experiment is not a successful validation of long term "memory" but rather just a creature, like any other, learning what each button and level of it's body does. For a little while you managed to convince the poor blighter that part of it's body was a bright shiny mobile.
Delusional, irrespective of whether your theory is correct the study still shows that the infant can remember the mobile - which is the main aim of the experiment.
Have the study considered the variable of presenting the infant with a different mobile and accessing the reactional value as oppose to just the one mobile? Ashley
I find these studies with infants ingenious.
@Delusional: though you state that you disagree, what you wrote there doesn't quarrel with the result that they baby can remember. You might want to argue that they aren't conscious of it, but that does not at all mean that they don't have a memory of it.
As delusional as it seems, I definitely believe this. My earliest memory is from a time when I was not quite 1 years old. I remember that I had a babysitter who was young with long, straight brown hair. I also remember the apartment complex and the old man and his dog (poodle) that lived next door. I asked my father about whether all of these memories where true. He was pretty shocked, but confirmed that before I was one we had a babysitter with long straight brown hair and we lived in a certain apartment complex with an old man next door with a little poodle. I was less than one years old.
I don't think I imagined these memories.
All the way through adolescence, I had a fuzzy but real memory of what my parents confirmed was my first birthday party: a pink cake, white tablecloth, glasses raised around a round table, my grandfather wearing something like a dinner jacket and making a toast, in a private room with two large windows with lace curtains. (No photographs were taken of the event.) What's strange is that now, at 23 years old, I can no longer recall the actual memory--the feeling of being back in that moment, re-experiencing it--like I could at 5, 9, even 13 years of age. I can now only remember those childhood memories of the event, and not the event itself. So instead of a memory of my first birthday party, i am left with a hollow composite visual "video" in my head of what I remembered in adolescence, which I feel detached from--i.e, outside of the experience.
Whenever I now try to recall this memory of the memory, I find that involuntarily, I keep retroactively "sharpening" the picture, assigning artificial details, like the color of the carpeting, to the scene in my mind. So I try not to think about it or actively recall it, as though leaving it untouched might preserve whatever is left of the integrity of the original memory.
I lost lower skill memories when I was an adult due to PTSD. What I discovered was that we can’t function at a very high level without unconscious habitual memories. After my memory loss, I retained all the knowledge (factual memories) to brush my teeth, but nothing was trigging the action. I could type 70 wpm, but I could not turn around without getting lost. I began learning at an infant stage and seemed to have developed at a normal level all over again.
my earliest memory is: I cry. It's early/ late. My mom picks me up and carries my downstairs to the rocking chair and sings "lullaby.." After birth, this was my first home.
walked by a young lady looking into her eyes I had a weird urge to ask her if she was born on my birthdate and at the hospital I was born to our surprise she was born on my birthdate and at the same hospital
yeah good article but just have to say that there is different memory and infants do have memory before they hit 2 years old its just doesnt convert into long term memory. You should of wrote about that, saying that infants have memory is to general.