The Journal of Genetic Psychology

ISSN: 0022-1325 (Print) 1940-0896 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vgnt20

A Developmental Account of Early Childhood Amnesia Joseph M. Fitzgerald To cite this article: Joseph M. Fitzgerald (1991) A Developmental Account of Early Childhood Amnesia, The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 152:2, 159-171, DOI: 10.1080/00221325.1991.9914663 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1991.9914663

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The Journal of Generic Psychology, 152(2). 159-171

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A Developmental Account of Early Childhood Amnesia JOSEPH M. FITZGERALD Department of Psychology Wayne State IJniversity

ABSTRACT. This study was an attempt to demonstrate the utility of a developmental approach to the study of early childhood amnesia. Working from a model of early childhood memory development proposed by Nelson and Ross (1980), I hypothesized that children would show early childhood amnesia and that this could be tested by comparing obtained estimates of memory strength to values predicted by a standard retention function. The data confirm this hypothesis for 6- and 10-year-old children and suggest that the early childhood amnesia period extends from birth to a point between the third and fourth birthdays. The data also support a prediction, derived from the aforementioned model, that children would report a disproportionate number of general memories from the amnesia period. Thus, the developmental model provides a useful vehicle for examining early childhood amnesia and helps to frame further questions such as why some specific memories from this period are retained even though most are lost.

A FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTIC of human memory is that as time passes there is a decline in the probability that a specific episode in one’s life can be recalled. This decline in probability of recall has been shown to lawfully follow a retention function, (log) memory strength = F (log) time. In amnestic conditions, however, memory strength is lower than the level predicted by the standard retention function. Some events, such as head trauma, electroconvulsive shock therapy, or malnutrition, greatly reduce the probability of recall. Although the neurological and psychological mechanisms of amnesia remain unspecified, in most cases the root cause of the amnesia can be determined. Early childhood amnesia resembles other amnestic conditions in the sense that memory strength is lower than the level predicted by simple retenRequests for reprints should be sent to Joseph M . Fitzgerald, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202. 159

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tion function. Evidence for early childhood amnesia was first reported by Henri & Henri (1988). Soon thereafter, Freud (195311916-1917) made early childhood amnesia a focal point in his psychoanalytic theory of development (White & Pillemer, 1979). The phenomenon is described in informal terms such as “I can’t remember anything that happened when I was a child,” and the metaphor of a veil falling over a large portion of one’s early life has often been used. But early childhood amnesia clearly differs from other amnestic conditions in that no clear root cause can be determined. There is no blow to the head, toxic substance ingested, or organic brain disease to blame. Although many theories of early childhood amnesia have been offered (see White & Pillemer, 1979, for a review), how the veil of early childhood amnesia falls remains unexplained. Empirical studies typically have involved asking college students about their early memories [e.g., Waldfogel (1948)J. Much of the theory and research in this area has been decidedly nondevelopmental. Although interesting explanations of early childhood amnesia based on other developmental phenomena have been put forth, the topic has not received extensive attention among developmentalists. Schachtel(l947) proposed that the development of schemata, defined as language categories, rendered prelinguistic experiences from the older child and adult inaccessible; Waldfogel (1948) proposed that infants and young children are not sufficiently intelligent to encode information properly, a view consistent with then-contemporary views of infant intellectual capacity; more recently, White and Pillemer ( 1979) proposed that neurological development and a subsequent cognitive reorganization accounts for early childhood amnesia. Nelson and Ross (1980) suggested, in the context of script theory (Schank & Abelson, 1977), that early childhood amnesia might arise as a result of normal memory development during infancy and early childhood. They build on general event representation theory and accounts of event memory developed from research with college students (Graesser, Gordon, & Sawyer, 1979). Two of their fundamental premises are (a) that the coding of memories involves some form of abstraction and (b) that particular events are typically encoded as instances of scripted activities rather than as complete memories for each episode. Nelson and Ross thus locate the explanation of early childhood amnesia in a model of memory development, albeit a model in which the mechanisms of development are not specified. One would assume, however, that at some level the neurological factors discussed by White and Pillemer, as well as social context factors, play important roles. Nelson (1984) set out three propositions about event memory in early childhood.

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1. Young children are able to form mental representations of specific events at an early age. 2. As similar events recur, representations of these events fuse into general memories. 3. Unless an event involves unusual activities, it is very likely that any event occurring in the child’s experience will be fused with other memories. Thus, 2- to 3-year-olds are unable to differentiate among the events which become fused into general memories or what Schank and Abelson (1977) refer to as knowledge structures. As a result, most of their memories are of the general sort. For example, a child following the same bedtime routine would have difficulty recalling the details of a specific bedtime (e.g., what nightgown she wore or what book was read to her). In support of this account of memory development, Farrar and Goodman (1990) report experimental evidence that 4-year-olds are more script dependent in recalling actual events than are 7-year-olds. With development, the memory system is able to differentiate among events, which frees the child from heavy reliance on scripted information. Unfortunately, Nelson and others are not clear regarding the fate of memories for single events, but Nelson (1984) did write that “If unrepeated experiences tend to fade, drop out, or become inaccessible with time, one could adequately account for all the data” (p. 109). This can be read as implying that memories for single events formed during this period are forgotten at the same rate as memories formed in other periods. In summary, a developmental view of early childhood amnesia based on the development of event representation suggests that a very large proportion of the event memories of early childhood are fused into generic memories. This high rate of fusing is thought to occur because the child is less able or less likely to differentiate among experiences. The degree of differentiation that the child is capable of making is limited by a variety of perceptual, conceptual, and linguistic factors. For example, emotional responses are one possible differentiating characteristic of episodes but toddlers have a limited set of emotional categories (e.g., happy and sad) and are thus likely to fuse together many situations that an older child might differentiate. Although consistent with script theory, the pivotal role of differentiation is not dependent on the specifics of script theory. The method used in this study is modeled after that of Wetzler and Sweeney (1986), who asked college students to report memories in response to single-word prompts (“Tell me the first event that comes to mind when you hear the word river”). Wetzler and Sweeney constructed a retention function for the age range 18 years to 6 years. As is typical of such data, memory strength declined steadily as the amount of elapsed time increased; more

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memories are reported from 1 day ago than I week ago, more from 1 week ago than 1 year ago, and so forth. They then tested whether the average number of memories reported in each of the early childhood years (ages 1 to 6 years) was equal to that predicted by their retention function. The number of memories for ages 1 and 2 was significantly lower than the number predicted by the retention function, supporting the view that early childhood amnesia is present at least for those years. The present study was designed (a) to more clearly specify the parameters of early childhood amnesia by using young children rather than college students as subjects and (b) to explore the utility of the Nelson and Ross (1980) model of early memory development for organizing and understanding early childhood amnesia data. Using 6- and 9- to 10-year-oldchildren as subjects provides several advantages over other naturalistic studies of early childhood amnesia. First, memory strength for the early childhood period should be much stronger in these children, and any departure from the predicted retention function is stronger evidence for the phenomena of early childhood amnesia. Second, it is important to study the phenomena independent of any changes that may take place later in development. If only college students are used as subjects, then changes in either cognitive or noncognitive factors in later childhood or adolescence may be partially responsible for the outcome. Finally, I expected the use of young children to increase the number of early memories reported and an analysis of the type of memories reported to allow testing of the validity of various explanations of early childhood amnesia.

Method Subjects and Procedure All the subjects were recruited from the same school in a middle-class community. Subjects were obtained by first seeking parental consent and then the consent of the children. A letter was sent home to parents describing the nature of the research. Students were asked to return these in a short period of time and were given replacements if the first letter was lost. The response rate was approximately 40%. I leamed from parental phone calls and discussions with subjects that there appeared to be more parental reluctance to participate than is true of standard memory studies. This seemed to reflect a concern that sensitive areas of the child’s life might be discussed, a concern that was unwarranted by the nature of the memories reported. Subjects were clustered into two age groups. The older group (7 boys, 9 girls) ranged in age from 9 to 10 years with a mean of 120.3 months. The younger group (3 boys, 5 girls) were all 6 years of age, with a mean age of 76.4 months.

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In the standard autobiographical memory task, subjects are presented with a stimulus, usually a word, and asked to think of the first event that comes to mind in association with that stimulus (Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974; Galton, 1879). In this study, however, the children were presented with pictures rather than words. The use of pictures allowed for the presentation of the same stimuli to both the 10-year-old and 6-year-old groups. The pictures were line drawings selected from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn, 1981). The items were associated with a mental age of 4 or below to insure that all subjects could label them readily. The cards selected illustrated objects (wagon, ball) and activities (tying a shoe), and none contained any clear affective content.’ Subjects were tested individually. The interviewer began by talking informally to the subject, then spoke in general terms about memories and assured the subjects of the privacy of their conversation. Then the interviewer modeled “thinking of a memory” and told it to the child. Subjects received these instructions: This is how I’m going to ask for your memories. 1 have a stack of cards and on each one is a picture. I want you to look at each picture until it reminds you of a memory. Then I want you to describe the memory in a few words. The memory can be an old one, like something that took place months or years ago, or it could be a new one, something you remember from yesterday. I want you to try hard to remember a memory for each picture. Does this make sense to you? (If not the interviewer modeled the procedure and presented the instructions again.)

These instructions were modified versions of those used by Waldfogel(l948) and Crovitz and Quinna-Holland (1976) in their studies of early childhood amnesia in college students. All subjects were given at least three practice trials. Some children in both age groups tried to turn the session into a vocabulary test. They would label the stimulus and then sit silently until reminded we wanted them to think of a memory. In most cases they would then report a memory, but their behavior would make it impossible to obtain reliable response time data, so response times were not collected. Subjects were encouraged to try hard to find a memory. Some of the younger children would say “I can’t think of anything” after only a few seconds. Children, particularly 6-year-olds, required considerable encouragement and modeling of appropriate responses. After the three examples were given and the interviewer felt confident that the subject understood the task, 24 stimuli were presented one at a time. The brief description of the event provided by the child was recorded by the

lA

list of stimuli is available from the author.

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interviewer. After all 24 trials, the interviewer asked the subject to provide a date for each memory. The dating responses varied somewhat from subject to subject and with the age of the memory. The majority of memories were from the past year. Recent memories tended to be dated by day of the week and the interviewer translated these into calendar dates. Memories for events that had occurred 2 to 12 months prior to testing tended to be dated either by season or month. Children in both age groups dated memories from more than 12 months prior to testing by either their age or (pre)school grade at the time of the event. Data on 5 pilot subjects indicated that 73% of these more remote memories were dated with the same age when subjects were asked to re-date them 7 to 10 days after their original interview. More specific dating of such memories was less consistent, and for that reason the subjects were not pressed to provide more specific information. Data on more recent memories indicated that 92% were assigned to the same date category. Thus, dating was consistent. It can be argued that this consistency results from memory for what the child said at the time of the first dating. This may account for some of the consistency, but the large number of memories (24) and the period over which consistency was assessed would suggest otherwise.

Results The account of early memory development presented earlier implies that older children or adults (a) should report fewer memories from the early childhood years than predicted by standard retention functions, (b) should tend to report general memories at a higher rate for the early childhood years, and (c) should report early childhood specific memories of novel or uncommon events that were not fused with other memories. Retention Function Analysis

The data for each age group was analyzed separately. For each group, a retention function was calculated using regression analysis. The retention function was based on those memories for specific events that occurred between the child’s fourth birthday and the date of the interview; the age of 4 years was selected because several studies of early childhood amnesia in college students had pointed toward the age of 3.5 years as the defining or landmark age for early childhood amnesia. For this regression analysis, the dependent variable was memory strength indexed as the log(memories per day) and the independent variable was time indexed as log(days since the event occurred). The regression analysis was then used to predict memory strength for ages 6 months, 18 months, 30 months, and 42 months; each of these ages

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marks the midpoint of one of the first 4 years of life. The critical point of the analysis was the comparison of these four predicted values with the obtained values for each interval. For example, the number of memories reported between the third and fourth birthdays was used to calculate memory strength at 42 months. If the obtained values were significantly lower than the predicted values, this would constitute evidence for the hypothesis of early childhood amnesia. Only memories for specific events were included in this analysis. Excluded from analysis were all general, or generic, memories-memories that, in principle, cannot be dated. The designation of a memory as a generic memory occurred during the interview process. If the subject could not provide a specific date, they were asked, “Did you have a specific time in mind or were you just thinking about (activity) in general?’ Most often when a subject could not provide a date, they stated that they were thinking about the activity in general. Thus, a child might report “going to bed at night.” This was accepted as a memory for a single event only if the child reported thinking of a specific experience of going to bed on a particular night. The results of the regression analysis for the 10-year-olds is presented in Figure 1. Based on 11 data points, the r2 value for this analysis was .98, p < .001. All 11 data points fell within the 95% confidence interval; the regression line not only provides an excellent overall fit but each data point between ages 4 and 10 years fits the predictions of the equation. Table 1 presents the results of the critical tests for each yearly interval between birth and the fourth birthday. The test involves calculating the confidence interval (p < .05) for the predicted value for each age. These confidence intervals are calculated using a corrected standard error for each predicted value (Pedhazur, 1982). Any obtained value falling beyond the limits of the confidence interval are regarded as significant departures. Memory strength was lower for the intervals birth to 1 year, 1 to 2 years, and 2 to 3 years. (Note that on a log scale that higher negative values are associated with lower decimal values and lower memory strength.) The obtained value for the age range 3 to 4 years was lower than predicted but not significantly so. Thus, the data for the 10-year-olds support the hypothesis of early childhood amnesia and locate it in the age range birth to 3 years. The regression analysis for the 6-year-olds was based on 8 data points and accounted for 98% of the variance. Each of the 8 data points between age 4 and date of testing fell within the 95% confidence interval, suggesting that the regression equation represented all the data accurately. The results of the critical tests are presented in Table 1. Memory strength was lower than that predicted by the regression analysis for each yearly interval between birth and 4 years. Thus, the data for Gyear-olds support the early childhood amnesia hypothesis but indicate that it might encompass the interval 3 to 4 years, as

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Average Chronological Age FIGURE 1. The retention function and obtained values for memory strength. The dashed portion of the retention function represents the predicted values for those data points based on the retention function (solid line) between 1 day ago and 6 years prior to testing. The last four data points to the right (empty circles) are the obtained values for memory strength for the early childhood amnesia years.

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TABLE 1 Obtained and Predicted Memory Strength Value for Each Interval During the Amnesia Period

Age group and interval

Value predicted

Value obtained

Boundary of confidence interval

-3.46 -3.61 -3.72 -3.81

-3.96 -4.42 -4.83 -5.99

-4.25 -4.40 -4.52 -4.62

.05 .05 .05

-3.74 -4.07 -4.33 -4.53

-4.83 -5.45 -5.99 -5.99

-4.73 -5.09 -5.37 -5.58

.05 .05 .05 .054

p

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10-year-olds ~

2-3 1-2 Birth-I 6-year-olds ~

2-3 1-2 Birth-I

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Note. Regression equations for the two age groups were as follows: For 10-year-olds. y = (- .852) x + 3.13; for 6-year-olds, y = (- .99) .r + 3.01.

well as the interval birth to 3 years. The pattern is thus similar to that of the 10-year-olds who also recalled fewer (but not significantly fewer) memories than expected for the age range 3 to 4 years. Generic and Specific Classification The instructions of the autobiographical memory task clearly ask for specific memories, but even among adults some generic memories were reported. Instead of reporting "my brother gave me a ride in a wagon one day," they reported "I remember riding in a wagon". As noted earlier, the designation of a report as a generic memory occurs when a subject cannot provide a specific date for a memory. When this occurred, the interviewer probed to determine whether the memory was for a single instance and the subject could not remember when it took place or whether the report referred to a general experience. The memory development model proposed by Nelson and Ross (1980) suggests that in the age range of birth to 4 years children form generic memories similar to those formed by older children and adults but have difficulty differentiating among them. I expected, therefore, generic memories to represent a larger proportion of memories between birth and age 4 than in the years after 4.

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The data suggest that generic memories are, in fact, more common among early childhood memories than among later memories. Ten-year-olds reported 6 generic memories and 300 specific memories in the age range 4 to 10, a ratio of 1 to 50, but in the early childhood amnesia period of birth to the fourth birthday there were 4 generic memories and 14 specific memories, a ratio of 1 to 3.5. The ratio of generic to specific memories seems clearly different for the two periods, but the difference cannot be statistically tested because of a lack of independent observations; each subject contributed several memories to each distribution rather than only one. The 6-year-olds reported 3 generic and 6 specific memories for the amnesia period, whereas they reported 172 specific but only 8 generic memories between the ages of 4 and 6. As noted in the introduction, the Nelson and Ross (1980) model implies that specific memories from the early childhood amnesia period tend to refer to novel events (that is, events that had not been fused with others into a single memory representation). The early childhood memories for single events are presented in the appendix. Because we know so little about the process of encoding complex day-to-day events, it is difficult to state that these memories, as a group, fit the criteria implied by Nelson and Ross, but the majority appear to refer to relatively unique events.

Discussion If early childhood amnesia is defined as a departure from the predictions of a standard retention function, then the present data support the hypothesis of early childhood amnesia. The hoped-for advantage of using children as subjects was at least partially achieved. Whereas Wetzler and Sweeney (1986) had located the end of early childhood amnesia before the second birthdaya date inconsistent with prior definitions of the phenomenon and the Nelson and Ross ( 1980) theory, these data support an upper boundary in the age range of 3 to 4 years. Moreover, both the distribution of generic memories, as opposed to memories for single events, and the nature of the single-event memories reported support a script-based explanation. Because earlier explanations of early childhood amnesia, especially those of Freud (1953) and Schachtel (1947), are very broad and difficult to falsify, it is difficult to assess the impact of the results of this study on such theories. However, if the explanation of early childhood amnesia, a memory phenomenon, can be firmly rooted in a model of memory development, there would be less need to invoke either language development or repression hypotheses to account for the data. Much work remains to be done, however, before a memory account can be accepted. It is crucial to conduct longitudinal studies of memory for early childhood events. Researchers (Nelson & Ross, 1980) and parents know that

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during the age interval of birth to 3 or 4 years children do form memories for specific experiences and at least occasionally report them to others. Farrar and Goodman (1990), for example, report that at intervals of up to 2 weeks, 4-year-olds can report roughly 30% of the events they experience in a brief play experience. The bias of the young memory system toward general knowledge has been recently replicated in a different context (self-concept) by Eder, Gerlach, & Perlmutter (1987). Such a bias may be quite adaptive for the young child who must learn general operating principles to adapt to the physical and social environment. It also parallels attachment phenomena in the sense that infants go through a period of undifferentiated attachment before attaching to a specific caretaker. The need for a memory system that responds more differentially to the environment may help to shape the development of the memory skills present in most children by the time they reach school age. There is, in fact, some evidence linking the demands of the environment and the rate of memory development (Ratner, 1984). This account of early childhood amnesia is based on retrospective data because the human early childhood amnesia data are primarily retrospective. Would we reach the same conclusion if we prospectively studied the issue? Specifically, we need to know whether a set of events verified as being encoded as memories for single events at an early age (e.g., age 2) has an equal or lower probability of recall 10 years later than a set of events encoded as specific memories at a later age, (e.g., age 10). Such prospective research could also provide ecological insights into the nature of memory development across the childhood years, much as the work of Linton (1975) has increased our understanding of the operations of long-term memory in adulthood. Among the issues such longitudinal work could address would be the issue of the relationship between novelty and likelihood of recall. Although novel events have a lower average probability of being fused into scripts, they also may have a lower average accessibility because of the information encoded within them. Identifying the factors that operate to maintain the small corpus of remaining early childhood memories may be as interesting as identifying why most early experiences are lost. APPENDIX Specific Memories Reported by 10-Year-Olds From the Early Childhood Amnesia Period Swinging on a fence and falling off Broke a hanger in my closet Mom washing tires squirting me with hose Grandad planted a tree it fell over on my bike Nursery school field trip-got to milk cow

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Had a tug of war with my dog over sock Receiving a comb for having picture taken The first time I went shopping Threw my fork and hit my sister Sister lock me in the closet Got up and walked on mom’s counter Got hit in the face with a comb Had a temble nightmare and woke up holding doll Trying to tie my shoe when I was 2

REFERENCES Crovitz, H. F., & Quinna-Holland, K. (1976). Proportion of episodic memories from early childhood by years of age. Bulletin of the Psychonornic Society, 7 , 6162. Crovitz, H. F., & Schiffman, H. (1974). Frequency of episodic memories as a function of their age. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 4 , 5 17-5 18. Dunn, L. M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service. Eder, R. A., Gerlach, S. G., & Perlmutter, M. (1987). In search of children’s selves: Development of the specific and general components of the self-concept. Child Development, 58, 1044-1050. Farrar, M. J., & Goodman, G. S. (1990). Developmental differences in the relation between scripts and episodic memory: Do they exist? In R. Fivush & J. Hudson (Eds.), What young children remember and why (pp. 30-64). New York: Cambridge University Press. Freud, S. (1953). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. In J. Stachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vols. 15-16). London: Hogarth Press (Original work published 1916-1917). Galton, F. (1879). Psychometric experiments. Brain, 2, 148-162. Graesser, A. C., Gordon, S. E., & Sawyer, J. D. (1979). Recognition memory for typical and atypical actions in scripted activities: Tests of a script pointer + tag hypothesis. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 3 19-332. Henri, V., & Henri, C. (1898). Earliest recollections. Popular Science, 53, 108115. Linton, M. (1975). Memory for real-world events. In D. A. Norman & D. E. Rumelhart (Eds.), Explorations in cognition (pp. 376-404). San Francisco: Freeman. Nelson, K. (1984). The transition from infant to child memory. In M. Moscovitch (Ed.), Infant memory (pp. 103-130). New York: Plenum. Nelson, K., & Ross, G. (1980). The generalities and specifics on long-term memory in infants and young children. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), Children’s memory: New directions for child development (Vol. 10, pp. 87-101). San Francisco: JosseyBass. Pedhazur, E. J. (1982). Multiple regression in behavioral research (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Ratner, H. H. (1984). Memory demands and the development of young children’s memory. Child Development, 55, 2173-2191. Schachtel, E. G. (1947). On memory and childhood amnesia. Psychiatry, 10, 1-26. Schank, R., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Waldfogel, S. (1948). The frequency and affective character of childhood memories. Psychological Monographs, 62 (whole issue). Wetzler, S. E., & Sweeney, J. A. (1986). Childhood amnesia: An empirical demonstration. In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Autobiographical memory (pp. 191-201). New York: Cambridge University Press. White, S. H., & Pillemer, D. B. (1979). Childhood amnesia and the development of a socially accessible memory system. In J. F. Kihlstrom & F. J. Evans (Eds.), Functional disorders of memory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Received July 18, 1989

A developmental account of early childhood amnesia.

This study was an attempt to demonstrate the utility of a developmental approach to the study of early childhood amnesia. Working from a model of earl...
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