Autobiographical Memories Flashcards
Define: childhood amnesia
-inability to remember events and experiences that occured during the first few years of life
What types of memories do we retain from our toddler stages?
- procedural memories
- semantic memories
What are the 3 developmental deficit areas that can explain childhood amnesia?
- cognitive development
- brain development
- social development
How does deficits in the brain explain childhood amnesia?
-parts of the brain for formation and storage of events, working memory, and decision making are not developed fully until a few years after birth
(especially the prefrontal cortex)
-they lack the focus needed for proper encoding and remembering
How does deficits in cognitive development explain childhood amnesia?
- lack of self-concept until after 2yrs old
- limited linguistic abilities
- lack of cognitive schemas that contain cues necessary for later recall
How does deficits in social development explain childhood amnesia?
- they focus on routine aspects of an experience instead of focusing on distinctive aspects of experience which is what provides cues for later recall
- little children rely on adult’s questions to provide retrieval cues
What do our life “narratives” tell us about ourselves?
-they reflect our current needs, experiences, beliefs
What can influence the way we encode and tell our “stories”?
- the purpose of our story
- our culture
- formulating a central “theme” to go by
How does coming up with a theme for our “story” influence how we remember them?
- a theme serves as a cognitive schema that guides what we remember and what we forget
- it also influences judgments of events and people in the present