Childhood Amnesia and the Beginnings of Memory for Four...

When we ask people to recall experiences, they rarely report memories dating from much before about three years of age. For the purpose of this assessment I have chosen the ‘Childhood Amnesia and the Beginnings of Memory for Four Early Life Events’ conducted by JoNell A. Usher and Ulric Neisser, published in 1993 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Therefore, in the following paragraphs I will outline the aim of the study, the methodology and the overall findings. The current research indicates that most of the early memories are of distressing experiences. It is predicted that under certain conditions, children are able to recall painful and potentially harrowing medical experiences, such as shots (Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms,†¦show more content†¦Participants were aware of the background survey but they did not know that the experiment was focused on memory. In terms of the methodology, the investigators used a specific number of questionnaires per targeted events. To assess the offset of childhood amnesia two main, broad, questionnaires were used. Each one with subsequent, more relevant and event-targeted, set of questions. Additionally, participants were instructed to analyse the frequency and recency of their thoughts in relation to the target event using 4-point and 5-point scales. Furthermore, participants’ mothers were told to evaluate what their children reported as childhood memories. In order to try to trigger their memory, researchers asked the participants about ‘external information sources’, such as photographs, personal stories, etc. Even though the researchers were allowed to select the participants and classify them into predefined categories however, this approach faced a couple of limitations. First of all, participants could have provided better responses if they were interviewed rather than asked t o fill in questionnaires. 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