The great forgetting | Hacker News Reader

The great forgetting

aeon.co

68 pointsprostoalex15 comments

After living about 24 years in a rather protected countryside setting I decided to spend one year in China. This shocked me to some degree because it completely changed my view on most things in this world. But it also made me forget nearly everything from my years before I went to China. It's strange to say this, but a grownup doesn't often come into situations where he needs to recall specifics of his childhood. Therefore until now I never had a big problem with that, although it makes me still uncomfortable years later.

I'm having trouble conceptualizing the idea of being unable to remember anything before the age of 24. Can you expand on that?

For example, I can recall my time in high school and college -- both generally and specific events -- rather well (I think). When you think back to those times in your life, whether you were in school or doing something else, do you just draw a blank?

so from what i understand, speaking with simple terms (simply because i don't know well topic :)) - any living being, including human, starts with "blank brain" where a lot of interconnections exists and/or created easily. And since memories are really "state" of this very complex system, most of things/events remember-able simply blends and blurres during first few years of life.

For me this means two things - there is no way child will recall events from first couple years of his life. So there is no need to try to show new places, make him excited with particular event/thing. But in the same time, events happening in these early years affects brain (and whole body) development as a whole, so it is very important to make baby feel connected, safe, curious, etc.

Or even simpler - first couple years define "North/South/West/East" directions and then later brain develops within few "degrees" of this initial path.

Children still recall events, but limited to the most impact-ful ones.

Oh yeah, I don't totally dismiss ability to remember certain things. Just like adults get phobias - if there will be strong enough stimuli - it will affect state of the brain strongly enough to retain after many years.

Sorta. Children don't form any memory of their early years because knowledge only makes sense in context of other knowledge. Synapses have to have something meaningful to connect to. Children don't have knowledge, so it's difficult to form new memories in their minds because there's nothing in their minds to connect the new memories to.

As children, our first memories are vitally important because they are quite literally building the foundation for every memory that will come thereafter.

Children don't form memories of their early years? How do children in their early years recognize their parents?

I believe the parent is referring to episodic memory [1]. Of course we are forming "memories" as we are making sense of the world since day 1 (and this includes learning about our bodies).

The concept we usually refer to when speaking about "memories" is that of episodic memories which have a lot of context associated with them. These types of "memories" are formed and retained reliably mostly after children reach school age [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_development#Episodic_Mem...

OK, early memories are commonly not retained, but parent specifically claimed they're not formed, which is ludicrous. Ask a speaking child what happened last week and they'll tell you. Show a non-speaking infant something with a result they should be able to predict, and they'll be surprised if that result doesn't happen.

Memories from your 30s are also commonly not retained, but I don't hear anyone saying 35-year-olds can't form memories.

Note that children do form memories. From the article:

"Then in 1987, a study by the Emory University psychologist Robyn Fivush and her colleagues dispelled that misconception for good, showing that children who were just 2.5 years old could describe events from as far as six months into their past."

Perhaps your argument still holds, though. It seems plausible.

YMMV. My first memories start as a trickle before the first year growing to a torrent starting from 12 months and forward. My sister hardly remembers anything before the age of 10. :-)

Yes, for some I have distinct memories of a particular event from when I was about 18-24 months. It was climbing into a 'fort' made of a disassembled fence made by my older siblings.

I don't remember anything else at all from before I was five.

All I can think of was that it must have been very exciting.

This reminds me of an article I read a while back about the nature of consciousness and memory. It was about a deaf guy in a less developed country that didn't know what to do with deaf people. He wasn't taught sign language and grew up deaf and dumb. It wasn't till he was in his early 20s that someone from a developed country visited and helped him learn sign language, though it was tough. His "eureka" moment came when he realized his teacher was naming things (chair, apple, etc). Before that he didn't even have the concept that things could have names!

After a few years he was a normal functioning adult. When asked about his life before learning sign language, he describes it as "the dark time" (or something to that nature). That life was very very different for him—just kind of an indistinct haze, almost like a dream.

The article was positing that consciousness and memories are strongly dependent on our inner monologue. And that for a person with no language skills (like the deaf man or infants), complex memories just aren't possible at all—life is just a haze.

Heh, reminded me of Ishmael. Great book.

great essay!

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