Michael K. Meyerhoff, EdD
How old are you in your earliest memory? One? Two? Three years old? Perhaps you have some spotty recall of events from the preschool years, but it probably isn't until the elementary school years that you start having a significant number of reasonably vivid and detailed recollections. Why is that?
The fact of the matter is that it takes a long time for memory capacity to mature. And we're not talking about a simple growth in physical strength. Memory is actually a rather complex process that involves a great deal of mental skill. Developing and perfecting the relevant abilities is what takes several years.
Memory is all about capturing experiences in mental form. For the first six months or so of life, babies are unable to do this. They live strictly in the here and now. Out of sight is out of mind. If something is not immediately available to their senses, it does not hold any meaning.
So, for instance, imagine a four-month-old baby sitting in a high chair playing with a rattle. He drops the rattle and it rolls under the table where he can't see it. What does he do? He doesn't cry. He doesn't look for it. He just goes on with life. The rattle has ceased to exist.
Now imagine the same baby at seven or eight months of age sitting in the same chair playing with the same rattle. He drops the rattle and it rolls under the table where he can't see it. Now what does he do? He looks for it, and if he can't find it right away, he starts crying. This indicates the child can now hold onto things in mental form, and he knows the rattle is still out there somewhere, even if he can't see it.
The first mental images tend to be brief and unstable. But as the months go by, the capacity to form and hold mental representations of experiences strengthens considerably. Certainly by two years of age, that capacity is about as strong as it is ever going to be. So why aren't there more vivid and detailed memories from the next few years?
Here it is important to realize that making memories is not like taking photographs or videotapes. We only take a few pieces of information out of any experience, and what we take is based on conscious decisions regarding what is important and what we will need later on. Consequently, when we go to recall something in the future, it is not like we can look at everything all over again. All that is available is what we chose to store in our memories.
I'll give you an example of this. See if you can follow the scenario below and answer the question at the end using only your memory. No writing stuff down, no using fingers and toes, and no going back and re-reading. Ready?
I'm a bus driver. As I start my route, obviously my bus is empty. At the first stop, 11 people get on. At the next stop, 2 people get off and 8 people get on. At the next stop, 5 people get off and 7 people get on. At the next stop, 9 people get off and 4 people get on. At the next stop, 12 people get off and 2 people get on. At the next stop, 6 people get off and 13 people get on. At the next stop, 5 people get off and 2 people get on. Are you still with me?
Okay. How many stops have I made? I don't care how many people are on the bus. I just want to know how many stops I've made. If you weren't making a conscious decision to record that information in your memory, it now is not available to you. You can't run the videotape and count at this point.
Making such decisions is part of what is called "encoding" memories. You have to decide what you want to take away from any experience. And to make things even more difficult, you can only take away a limited amount. Again, you are not taking a photograph or videotape. You are merely jotting down a few notes.
If that is the case, why do we have such vivid and detailed memories of various experiences? Let me give you another example. I once saw an ad for a secretarial school that read, "If u cn rd ts msg, u cn gt a gd jb." What does that say? You reply, "If you can read this message, you can get a good job." But that is not what it actually says. You are filling in a lot of missing pieces so the whole thing makes sense.
That is what happens with memory. This is why two eyewitnesses to the same event will differ in many details. This is why a story is never exactly the same each time we tell it. Each person fills in the missing pieces a little differently, and we fill in the missing pieces a little differently each time.
Of course, how accurate and useful the memory is depends on how good we are at taking notes. And this is why we don't have good memories from the early years. Did you ever have the experience of taking notes in a class, and then a few weeks later when you were studying for the exam you couldn't make sense of the notes you had taken? Well, it takes children a while to become good note takers. The main reason so much is missing from the first five or six years of life is encoding failure. The right stuff was either not entered into memory or not entered very well.
This is why young children may be very good at remembering things that happen all the time or anything that happened recently, but it is unrealistic for them to be able to have solid long-term memories. After a while, it is simply not possible to make sense out of the poor notes that were taken much earlier.
In addition to encoding, there are the processes of storage and retrieval. Imagine a big storeroom with lots of file cabinets, each containing several drawers and many folders. If you merely toss in reports haphazardly, you are going to have a lot of trouble finding what you're looking for later on. If you can develop a good organizational system and get a lot of practice using it, you'll have relatively little trouble.
Again, it takes time for children to become proficient at storage and retrieval. As a result, they may produce a fairly good set of notes on occasion, but then they may be unable to locate those notes later on. Consequently, they may indeed have memories, but they may have a problem producing them when asked.
Let me give you an example of this. Who was the first president? That's easy. George Washington. Now, who was the second president? You can't remember? That information is not in your memory? Okay, I'll give you some names. Rogers, Bennett, Adams, and McKay. That's right. John Adams. It was in your memory; you just needed some help finding it.
That's why you experience the following scenario. The four-year-old comes in from playing outside and you ask, "Where is your jacket?" The child claims he doesn't know. "Did you leave it at the park?" Again, he claims he doesn't know. "Did you leave in the backyard?" Once more, he claims he doesn't know. "Did you leave it at Billy's house?" Then you get the reply, "Yeah! That's where it is!"
One more thing. As we develop, we tend to use language to encode most of our memories. Words are an easy way to capture a lot of experience in condensed form. During the first years of life, children often encode things in sensory and motor, rather than linguistic, form. This results in strong memories that are definitely there but cannot be easily expressed.
For instance, if you ask a child, "Who was the first president?" he will have little trouble responding "George Washington." But if you ask him, "How do you tie your shoelaces" he is likely to reply, "I don't know, I just do it." He obviously remembers how to tie his shoelaces. He does it every day. He just can't put it into words.
A lot of skills, from walking to riding a bicycle, are stored in this fashion. Also, powerful emotional reactions tend to be encoded early on without the use of words. So, for example, a child who had his mouth scalded by soup that was too hot may be afraid to eat soup in the future, even if he can't express why, because the experience was not encoded in a way that could be reconstructed verbally.
The bottom line is that parents need to be patient and understanding when it comes to their young children's recall ability. Keep in mind that memory is a complex process that takes many years to learn how to employ effectively.
Michael K. Meyerhoff, Ed.D., is executive director of The Epicenter Inc., "The Education for Parenthood Information Center," a family advisory and advocacy agency located in Lindenhurst, Illinois. He may be contacted via e-mail at epicntrinc@aol.com.
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