The reasons why many of us have trouble remembering our earliest moments in life are still unclear, but various studies have attempted to explain the phenomenon. (Photo: Justin Paget via Getty Images)
Your mother's smile when you said your first word, or the scent of candles on your second birthday cake are memories many would like to hold on to. But almost no one can remember events from very early childhood, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia or childhood amnesia.
So why do we tend to forget these early memories?
To answer this question, it’s important to distinguish between two main types of memory: semantic and episodic. Semantic memory is our ability to recall facts and information about the world around us, while episodic memory allows us to remember details of life events, such as the people we were with and the places where they happened.
Young children can remember facts in the moment, such as who their parents are, or that they have to say “please” before their mother will give them candy. These are examples of semantic memory.
However, in the case of episodic memory, the boundaries become somewhat unclear.
According to conventional scientific theory, we tend to forget episodic memories formed between the ages of 2 and 4 because the area of the brain responsible for their formation and retrieval—the hippocampus—is not yet fully developed by this time.
Nora Newcomb, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, told Live Science that children may not be able to pin down specific episodes until they are between 2 and 4 years old, since that's when the hippocampus begins to connect pieces of information.
Newcomb noted that for children younger than that, episodic memory can be overly complex, especially as the child begins to learn how the world works.
“I think the main goal of the first two years is to acquire semantic knowledge, and from that perspective, episodic memory can actually be a distraction,” Newcomb said.
However, recent research is beginning to challenge this theory. For example, a study published in March 2025 in the journal Science found that in the early years of life, the hippocampus may encode information needed for episodic memory.
In the study, the researchers showed 26 children aged 4 months to 2 years a series of images, each lasting two seconds, of faces, scenes, and objects that form the basis of episodic memories. At the same time, the team analyzed activity in the children’s hippocampus using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
After a short pause, the children were shown the image they had already seen next to the new image for four seconds. During this time, the researchers also monitored how long the children looked at each image—another indicator of whether they recognized the old image after looking at the new one.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
