What is your earliest memory? Do you remember being five years old, being a toddler, being a baby? Do you remember what it was like in the womb? Chances are you might remember something from when you were around five years old, whereas the earlier years of your life are most likely a blur, if you remember anything at all.
Yet the early years of our lives are when we learn all the basics for the rest of our lives. We learn to crawl, to walk, to talk, to recognise people and situations, to differentiate cats from dogs and other animals, to play with other children and navigate playground politics, to understand that fire is hot, that we need to be cautious around strangers, that we need to look both ways before crossing the street... We learn almost everything we need to know to live and survive the rest of our lives yet when we're older we usually can't remember learning many of these things.
Which leads me to wonder, how exactly does a baby's brain develop? How does a child's? A baby is born able to breathe, cry, excrete waste and sleep. It quickly learns to suckle, to recognise familiar smells and sights and sounds and with every passing day and every new experience, that baby learns more. But how does that development happen?
How does your bundle of joy recognise your face and your voice over someone else's? Why does your toddler settle down when you hold him and he smells you? How can your little girl recognise your walk when you come down the hall and know it from all others? Thankfully there are many people who want answers to these questions just as much as I do, people who *have* done the research and are able to answer some of the questions so many of us have.
Popular Science's Kate Gammon looks at an article published in Consciousness and Cognition by Danish researchers entitled "Three-year-olds' memory for a person met only once at the age of 12 months: very long-term memory revealed by a late-manifesting novelty preference". She writes:
That is indeed a remarkably simple experiment, however one that yields a lot of interesting new information. The article continues by explaining that "Memory doesn't always work in a conscious way. When the experimenters asked the 3.5-year olds which man they had met, their answers were no better than random guessing at the experimenter they had previously met."
To me, this means that the children instinctively looked at the new person more than at the person they had met before, yet when asked to recall which person they had met previously, they weren't able to answer conclusively. Their brain remembered, stored the 'old vs. new' information somewhere resulting in the children looking more at the new person, yet when asked to recall which researcher they had met before, they weren't able to get to or access the information.
This leads me to wonder if this 'visual memory' is something like an unconscious memory, something that somehow shapes how we act instinctively, something that we can't explain as anything more rational than 'a gut feeling'? We've seen someone or something before as babies (been exposed to it for a period as short as 45 minutes in the case of the article's research), yet we remember it without being able to explain that we remember, let alone why.
How much of what our children see and hear and experience will they remember even if they can't recall remembering? How much do they see and hear and experience as babies that shapes how they respond to people, experiences and situations later on in life? How much have we ourselves seen or heard as babies that we still carry with us today, the information stored somewhere in our brains? I'll sign off with that thought because honestly, it gives me a lot to think about. How much do we remember of what we witnessed as babies and young children, how much information do we have stored in our brains, things we picked up when we were young that we can't now consciously recall, yet that may shape who we are and how we respond to people or situations even to this day? It makes one wonder about a lot of things!
Yet the early years of our lives are when we learn all the basics for the rest of our lives. We learn to crawl, to walk, to talk, to recognise people and situations, to differentiate cats from dogs and other animals, to play with other children and navigate playground politics, to understand that fire is hot, that we need to be cautious around strangers, that we need to look both ways before crossing the street... We learn almost everything we need to know to live and survive the rest of our lives yet when we're older we usually can't remember learning many of these things.
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| playground slide |
Which leads me to wonder, how exactly does a baby's brain develop? How does a child's? A baby is born able to breathe, cry, excrete waste and sleep. It quickly learns to suckle, to recognise familiar smells and sights and sounds and with every passing day and every new experience, that baby learns more. But how does that development happen?
How does your bundle of joy recognise your face and your voice over someone else's? Why does your toddler settle down when you hold him and he smells you? How can your little girl recognise your walk when you come down the hall and know it from all others? Thankfully there are many people who want answers to these questions just as much as I do, people who *have* done the research and are able to answer some of the questions so many of us have.
Popular Science's Kate Gammon looks at an article published in Consciousness and Cognition by Danish researchers entitled "Three-year-olds' memory for a person met only once at the age of 12 months: very long-term memory revealed by a late-manifesting novelty preference". She writes:
"Recently, Danish researchers put together a remarkably simple experiment. They had a list of families who had participated in a study when their babies were one year-olds. That study was run by two men, Osman Skjold Kingo and a colleague, who are roughly the same age. The babies came back when they were three and a half, and saw two screens of the same experiment they saw years prior – one with the experimenter they met, and the other with the other experimenter.
The researchers tracked the babies’ eye movements as they looked at the two screens. Overwhelming, they ended up staring at the face they hadn’t seen before – something known as novelty preference. (We humans are primed to look longer at a new thing rather than an ol’ everyday thing.) The research results were published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition in February."
Source : Babies can remember people they only met once, Popular Science (April 2014)
That is indeed a remarkably simple experiment, however one that yields a lot of interesting new information. The article continues by explaining that "Memory doesn't always work in a conscious way. When the experimenters asked the 3.5-year olds which man they had met, their answers were no better than random guessing at the experimenter they had previously met."
To me, this means that the children instinctively looked at the new person more than at the person they had met before, yet when asked to recall which person they had met previously, they weren't able to answer conclusively. Their brain remembered, stored the 'old vs. new' information somewhere resulting in the children looking more at the new person, yet when asked to recall which researcher they had met before, they weren't able to get to or access the information.
This leads me to wonder if this 'visual memory' is something like an unconscious memory, something that somehow shapes how we act instinctively, something that we can't explain as anything more rational than 'a gut feeling'? We've seen someone or something before as babies (been exposed to it for a period as short as 45 minutes in the case of the article's research), yet we remember it without being able to explain that we remember, let alone why.
How much of what our children see and hear and experience will they remember even if they can't recall remembering? How much do they see and hear and experience as babies that shapes how they respond to people, experiences and situations later on in life? How much have we ourselves seen or heard as babies that we still carry with us today, the information stored somewhere in our brains? I'll sign off with that thought because honestly, it gives me a lot to think about. How much do we remember of what we witnessed as babies and young children, how much information do we have stored in our brains, things we picked up when we were young that we can't now consciously recall, yet that may shape who we are and how we respond to people or situations even to this day? It makes one wonder about a lot of things!