Dunedin, New Zealand. A new longitudinal study finds that children as young as 2 years old can recall events they experienced even after long delays.

Some people can remember what happened at an early age, but the veracity of their memories is often questioned by other adults who can't recall events that took place before they were 3 or 4 years old, a phenomenon called childhood amnesia.


Fiona Jack, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, led a team of researchers to determine at what age our earliest memories occur. It was the first prospective study specifically designed to assess the verbal memory of children for a unique event 6 years after it occurred. Their findings appear in the journal Child Development.

The team examined forty-six children, 27-51 months old, and their parents. The children played a unique game when they were 2-4 year olds. In the game, children placed a large object in a hole at the top of a machine and turned a handle on the side. When a bell rang, a small but otherwise identical object was delivered through a door at the bottom of the machine.

Six years after the children were initially exposed to the game, the researchers interviewed the children and their parents to determine how well they remembered playing the game.

• A fifth of the children recalled the event.
  
  
• Two of the children who recalled the event were under 3 years old when they played the game.
  
  
• About half of the parents remembered the event.

Parents and children who recalled the event provided very similar reports about the game. That is, the reports were consistent and rank among the most convincing evidence to date that such early experiences can be verbally recalled after long delays.



Child plays with the Magic Shrinking MachineThe data have important implications for current theories of memory development and childhood amnesia, underscoring problems associated with evaluating the veracity of early memories under less controlled conditions.

Although researchers could not predict the children's long-term recall on the basis of general memory and language skills, they found evidence that talking about the event soon after it occurred may have helped preserve it in the memories of those who remembered it.

"Our results are consistent with theories that suggest that basic capacity for remembering our own experiences may be in place by 2 years of age," according to Fiona Jack. "The study has implications in clinical and legal settings, where it is often important to know how likely it is that a particular memory of an early experience is in fact genuine."

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