The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views
www.npr.org/...ldhood-why-early-memories-fade
memory teaching parenting learning childhood amnesia childhood brain science npr
shared by dsatkins1981 on 16 Jul 17
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"What we found was that even as young as the second year of life, children had very robust memories for these specific past events,"
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"Why is it that as adults we have difficulty remembering that period of our lives?"
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More studies provided evidence that at some point in childhood, people lose access to their early memories.
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children as old as 7 could still recall more than 60 percent of those early events
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children who were 8 or 9 recalled less than 40 percent.
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we observed was actually the onset of childhood amnesia,"
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still not entirely clear why early memories are so fragile
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Some early memories are more likely than others to survive childhood amnesia
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One example, she says, is a memory that carries a lot of emotion.
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"They want to be cooperative," she says, "so you have to be very careful not to put words in their mouth."
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It seems that any role that an adult plays in helping to re-tell, frame, and contextualize a memory in order to bring it to the surface or to make it last must be gentle and organic. We're not talking about rote memorization of past events - can you imagine the trauma from that at home or school let alone in a court room? Some things you wouldn't want to remember.
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Another powerful determinant of whether an early memory sticks is whether a child fashions it into a good story, with a time and place and a coherent sequence of events, Peterson says. "Those are the kinds of memories that are going to last," she says.
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And it turns out parents play a big role in what a child remembers, Peterson says. Research shows that when a parent helps a child give shape and structure and context to a memory, it's less likely to fade away.
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At first, he just talked about it with her.
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Talking through and eventually encouraging writing about past events - preferably pleasant memories - seems like a great way to help students build a repository of lasting childhood remembrances. I can recall my Mom and Dad saying things like, "We had a great day today didn't we? We got up so early! Didn't Dad make an excellent breakfast? Eggs and bacon. That bacon was so crispy. Don't you think that the smell of a good breakfast cooking makes it easier to get up?" Just an example, and I included the kind of leading questions a lawyer would want to avoid if this was about more than breakfast, but my folks were inviting we the children to enter the conversation as a valued part of the kind of reminiscing that adults may do after a nice day. It was just conversation but I can remember loads of them. And there was plenty of time for us to respond and share.
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school writing assignments.
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when our own memories start to fail, Peterson says, we rely on family members, photo albums and videos to restore them.
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How studying childhood amnesia is leading to changes in the way we think about brain development, learning, and memory --- this article mentions implications in the home and in the courts but it also seems relevant to the classroom
