Remembering early childhood: How much, how, and why (or why not)

In this article, we consider recent research on three questions about peopl e's memories for their early childhood: whether childhood amnesia is a real phenomenon, whether implicit memories survive when explicit memories do no t, and why early episodic memories are sketchy. The research leads us to fo rm three conclusions. First, we argue that childhood amnesia is a real phen omenon, as long as the term is defined clearly. Specifically, people are ab le to recall parts of their lives from the period between ages 2 and 5 year s, but they recall less from that period than from other periods. Second, w e conclude that implicit memories from early childhood may be evident even when explicit memories ar not, a finding that suggests early experience may affect behavior in ways that people do not consciously recognize. Third, w e argue that although young children are well known to be wonderfully effic ient learners of semantic information, they have difficulty in either encod ing or retrieving the interlinked aspects of events that lend them their au tobiographical character. Although more evidence is needed, the relative la ck of episodic memories of early childhood may be linked to maturation of p refrontal cortex.