Thus, her studies reveal, the "forgetting" process may contribute much more to childhood amnesia than the ability to form memories. But a nine-month old, without all these capabilities, will lose memories - like falling off the beam - with even the slightest disruption." We adults have mature cognitive capabilities that make us like an Olympic gymnast, able to recover when nudged. "I think of retaining memory as like walking a balance beam. "Although we know that by as early as nine months the rudiments of this memory system are in place, it's very fragile," she said. The immaturity of these abilities in children may be among the causes of childhood amnesia, she said. Other concepts are time and place, so memories can be put into context," she said. "One important component of what we call autobiographical memory is personal involvement, so the child has to have developed a concept of 'self' This means an understanding that 'self' today is the same as yesterday and will be the same tomorrow. Bauer said her experiments are exploring how other pieces of the neural puzzle contribute to memory development. However, studies have revealed that by age six months infants are already forming memories. Many researchers had long believed that childhood amnesia stemmed from the developmental immaturity of neural memory structures, Bauer said. This technique enables her to measure children's brain signals to detect when objects spark a neural memory response.īauer's activities also extend to writing, and her book on memory, Remembering the Times of Our Lives: Memory in Infancy and Beyond (Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates) is due out next year. She also uses a neural measurement called "event-related potentials," which require only fitting a comfortable cap containing recording electrodes over the child's head. She then analyzes how the child remembers the activity over time. She joins colleagues who explore childhood cognitive development as well as the "Memory at Duke" (MAD) group that concentrates on the intricacies of memory processes.īasically, her behavioral experiments involve showing a child objects (for example, nesting cups and a block), as well as a distinctive activity with the objects (for example, putting the block inside the cups to make a rattle). Memory is a very complex, reconstructive process."īauer, who comes to Duke from the University of Minnesota, will continue her experiments as a participant in two of the department's major research themes. But we know that that simply, absolutely is not true. But since it's a very foundational concept, many people think it's simple, perhaps no more than a mental tape recorder. "You cannot think about concepts or planning or problem-solving unless you have memories. "For those of us who study memory, it is the foundation of all cognition," Bauer said. Her experiments aim not only to satisfy that itch of scientific curiosity about the origin of an ability central to our lives, they also aim to understand how traumatic memories might be detoxified. The new professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences uses ordinary toys, high-tech brain monitoring and ingenuity to explore the memory capabilities of infants. But when we try to take ourselves back to our earliest days, before around age four, we all suffer "amnesia." Psychologist Patricia Bauer wants to find out why. Maybe it's a hazy memory of a joyous summer childhood day at the beach or of that adventurous first day in kindergarten, but most of us can conjure fleeting recollections of our earliest childhood.
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