Childhood Amnesia: A Conceptualization in Cognitive-Psychological Terms

Wetzler, Scott; Sweeney, John A.

doi:10.1177/000306518603400307

Cited by 23 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In this regard, the memory capabilities of infants are similar to those of patient, H.M., who underwent bilateral excision of his inferior temporal cortex and suffered subsequent anterograde memory dysfunction that was selective for autobiographical information (Scoville and Miller, 1957). Childhood amnesia does not appear to be a simple function of forgetting, because it does not expand with increasing age (Wetzler and Sweeney, 1986). Rather, the problem appears to be one of memory encoding, since young children have greater difficulty describing details of events that are not routine (Nelson and Gruendel, 1981;Hudson and Nelson, 1986).…”

Section: Maturation Of Presynaptic Transmission Properties Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Late postnatal maturation of excitatory synaptic transmission permits adult-like expression of hippocampal-dependent behaviors

Dumas

2005

Hippocampus

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Sensorimotor systems in altricial animals mature incrementally during early postnatal development, with complex cognitive abilities developing late. Of prominence are cognitive processes that depend on an intact hippocampus, such as contextual-configural learning, allocentric and idiocentric navigation, and certain forms of trace conditioning. The mechanisms that regulate the delayed maturation of the hippocampus are not well understood. However, there is support for the idea that these behaviors come "on line" with the final maturation of excitatory synaptic transmission. First, by providing a timeline for the first behavioral expression of various forms of learning and memory, this study illustrates the late maturation of hippocampal-dependent cognitive abilities. Then, functional development of the hippocampus is reviewed to establish the temporal relationship between maturation of excitatory synaptic transmission and the behavioral evidence of adult-like hippocampal processing. These data suggest that, in rats, mechanisms necessary for the expression of adult-like synaptic plasticity become available at around 2 postnatal weeks of age. However, presynaptic plasticity mechanisms, likely necessary for refinement of the hippocampal network, predominate and impede information processing until the third postnatal week.

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Section: Maturation Of Presynaptic Transmission Properties Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Late postnatal maturation of excitatory synaptic transmission permits adult-like expression of hippocampal-dependent behaviors

Dumas

2005

Hippocampus

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“…Predictions of qualitative change in what information is encoded, in how it is encoded, or both, also serve as the centerpiece of more contemporary social (e.g., Neisser, 1967Neisser, , 1988Schachtel, 1947) and cognitive (e.g., Wetzler & Sweeney, 1986;White & Pillemer, 1979) accounts of the absence of memories from infancy and early childhood. Although these accounts differ widely in their attributions, they have in common the notion that cognitive structures change qualitatively over time.…”

Section: Traditional Conceptualizations Of Episodic Memory In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

What do infants recall of their lives? Memory for specific events by one- to two-year-olds.

Bauer¹

1996

American Psychologist

150

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Until as recently as a decade ago, it was widely believed that infants and children younger than age three were unable to recall the events of their lives. Several developments, including findings of representational competence in infants in the first year of life and evidence of long-term recall abilities in children as young as three, have led to revision of this assumption. Through application of the technique of elicited imitation of action sequences, my colleagues and I have gathered evidence that children in the one- to two-year age range are able to recall specific events. Within this age period, age is not the major determinant of whether an event will be recalled: Even 13-month-olds recall events after long periods of time. Children demonstrate event memory both nonverbally and verbally. Rather than by age, recall primarily is determined by what the child is asked to remember, the number of exposures to the event, and the availability of cues or reminders of the event. These findings have led to rejection of the traditional assumption of a mnemonically incompetent one- to two-year-old and provided impetus for identification of the factors that maintain the accessibility of early memories over the transition from infancy to early childhood.

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“…The extended developmental trajectory of the pathways that underlie fear learning (e.g., prefrontal-amygdala connectivity) (Spear 2000;Gogtay et al 2004;Suzuki et al 2005) makes them especially sensitive to environmental disruption across development (Lupien et al 2009;Tottenham 2014). Fear memories acquired very early in life are typically subject to infantile amnesia (Wetzler and Sweeney 1986) and forgotten within a matter of days (Campbell and Campbell 1962;Callaghan and Richardson 2012). Rats fear conditioned at p17 show expected fear responses to the conditioned stimulus (e.g., freezing and vocalizing) but do not retain the information for longer than 10 d after fear conditioning (Callaghan and Richardson 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Post-retrieval extinction in adolescence prevents return of juvenile fear

Jones

Monfils

2016

Learn. Mem.

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Traumatic experiences early in life can contribute to the development of mood and anxiety disorders that manifest during adolescence and young adulthood. In young rats exposed to acute fear or stress, alterations in neural development can lead to enduring behavioral abnormalities. Here, we used a modified extinction intervention (retrieval+extinction) during late adolescence (post-natal day 45 [p45]), in rats, to target auditory Pavlovian fear associations acquired as juveniles (p17 and p25). The effects of adolescent intervention were examined by assessing freezing as adults during both fear reacquisition and social transmission of fear from a cagemate. Rats underwent testing or training at three time points across development: juvenile (p17 or p25), adolescent (p45), and adult (p100). Retrieval+extinction during late adolescence prevented social reinstatement and recovery over time of fears initially acquired as juveniles (p17 and p25, respectively). Adolescence was the only time point tested here where retrieval+extinction prevented fear recall of associations acquired 20+ days earlier.

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Childhood Amnesia: A Conceptualization in Cognitive-Psychological Terms

Cited by 23 publications

References 18 publications

Late postnatal maturation of excitatory synaptic transmission permits adult-like expression of hippocampal-dependent behaviors

Late postnatal maturation of excitatory synaptic transmission permits adult-like expression of hippocampal-dependent behaviors

What do infants recall of their lives? Memory for specific events by one- to two-year-olds.

Post-retrieval extinction in adolescence prevents return of juvenile fear

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