Childhood amnesia

Memory is a special thing in our life. What’s your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you 62 thunder or watched a television program? Adults seldom 63 events much earlier than the year or so before entering school, just as children younger than three or four 64 retain any specific, personal experiences. A variety of explanations have been 65 by psychologists for this "". One argues that the hippocampus, the region of the brain which is responsible for forming memories, does not mature 66 about the age of two. But the most popular theory 67 that, since adults do not think like children, they can not 68 childhood memories. Adults think in words, and their life memories, are like stories or 69 —one event follows 70 as in a novel or film. But when they search through their mental 71 for early childhood memories to add to this verbal life story, they don’t find any that fits the 72 . It’s like trying to find a Chinese word in an English dictionary.

Now psychologist Annette Simms of the New York State University offers a new 73 for childhood amnesia. She argues that there simply 74 any early childhood memories to recall. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use 75 spoken description of their personal experiences in order to turn their own short-term, quickly 76 impressions of them into long-term memories. In other 77 , children have to talk about their experiences and hear others talk about 78 —Mother talking about the afternoon 79 looking for seashells at the beach or Dad asking them about their day at Ocean Park. Without this 80 reinforcement, says Dr. Simms, children cannot form 81 memories of their personal experiences.