Where have all the things gone in childhood?

We always want to remember http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/7491.html "> The important things that happened in the first few years of our lives. Yet there is an explanation for this, and scientists have finally identified the exact age at which childhood memories fade and are permanently forgotten.

A new study of childhood amnesia (childhood amnesia, a phenomenon that is forgotten in infancy) points out that childhood memory forgetting can occur in children around age 7. Most children can recall a lot of things that happened a year ago when they were 3 years old, and these memories will soon subside after they reach the age of 5 or 6.

According to the study, most children aged 8 and 9 could only recall a small part of their experience before the age of 3 (about 35%).

Psychologists believe that this is because around the age of 7, the way people brain produce memory changes. The childhood experiences that older children can recall become more and more grown-up--specifically, the content of memory and the way in which memories are generated are closer to adults.

Furthermore, children's memory is faster and memory turnover is more frequent than that of adults, which means that the survival rate of childhood memory is lower.

The findings also explain why children have a clear memory of what is going on and often forget it after a few years.

"The clear memory of childhood and the forgetting to grow up with the events of the children's time, this paradox is the brain's amazing place." 」

Patricia Bauer, a professor of psychology at Emory University (Emory Eton of Arts and Science), presided over the study, she said:

"Although memories of early childhood can be forgotten quickly, they end up being reduced to adult levels," he said. So there are still some childhood memories to keep for the rest of their lives. 」

With 83 children, Professor Bauer and her friends continued to study for several years and eventually published the results in the science journal Memory.

The first part of the experiment was that when the children were 3 years old, they would tell the researchers about 6 unique events they had experienced: family outings, camping vacations, zoo trips, first day of school and birthday events.

The second part is that, between the ages of 5 and 9, they will come to the lab for the second time, recount the 6 things to the researchers, and be asked to recall the details of the memory they had described at the age of 3.

After careful analysis of the children's differences in detail, the researchers found a clear demarcation of age. Children between the ages of 5 and 7, they can recall the details of 63%-72%. The number of children aged 8 and 9 who recalled details dropped significantly to 35% to 36%.

Younger children (before age 7) seem to have a general lack of information about time and place when telling their stories. And their memories rarely have narrative narratives, and researchers believe this will lead to "extraction-induced forgetfulness" (retrieval induced forgetting, RIF)-that is, extracting memories from the brain can lead to the forgetting of relevant information. And when the children grow up, they recall that childhood will gradually have the time and place of the adult narrative elements.

Professor Bauer said: "In fact, compared to older children, younger children have a weaker overall storytelling ability, which is likely to have a lasting impact on childhood memory during the first 10 years of their life." 」

"We can also foresee that the memory of childhood, which remains at the age of 9 and 10, lasts a lifetime as the child's narrative ability progresses." 」