Babies develop memories from the time they are born. A child’s memory develops as they grow.
BABIES DEVELOP MEMORIES FROM THE TIME THEY ARE BORN. A CHILD'S MEMORY DEVELOPS AS THEY GROW.
Babies develop memories from the time they are born. Shortly after birth, newborn babies can recognise their mother's voice.
There are many ways to divide the construct of memory. For instance, we differentiate between working memory, which allows us to remember things that happened very recently for a very short time (e.g. what you had for lunch today), and long-term memory, which lets us remember events over a lifetime.
Long-term memory can be further divided into non-declarative (implicit) and declarative (explicit). Non-declarative memories are inaccessible to conscious awareness and include skill learning (e.g. knowing how to ride a bike) and priming (i.e. facilitating the stimuli processing based on previous experiences). Non-declarative memory is present from birth. For example, babies can process familiar faces more intently than new ones.
When most people think of memory or "remembering", they think of declarative memories. Declarative memory requires conscious recollection and includes the recognition and recall of names, objects and events. Historically, it was believed that children under age 3 or 4 were unable to form stable representations of events and therefore were unable to remember them. This belief came partially from findings that adults rarely recall personal events from before 3.5 years old, also known as "infantile amnesia" or "childhood amnesia". However, studies on infants and young children clearly show that they can form memories of events.
Research, coupled with studies from behavioural neuroscience (using animal models) and developmental neuroscience (using electrophysiology and neuroimaging), has given us insight into the ways that memory, and the brain structures that support it, changes with development.
Experimental studies showed that babies as young as 2 months old can remember, and their ability to remember increases with age.5 2-month-old babies could remember a connection between foot-shaking and mobile-moving for a day or two, 6-month-olds could remember it for about two weeks, and 9-month-olds could remember a game for as long as a month and a half. Playing games with babies and talking about what is being experienced, helps them develop their memory and other cognitive abilities.
Studies have found that young children, including toddlers, can recall information about their past experiences after days, months and even years.4,6,7 For example, a study in New Zealand assessed children's verbal memory years after an event. 46 children aged 27 to 51 months took part in a unique event and were interviewed about it twice, 24 hours and six years later. During the 6-year interview, nine children verbally recalled the event, including two who were under three years old when the event occurred.
There are links between declarative memory and brain development. Declarative memory is already apparent in the first year of life, as shown in research by behaviour or non-verbal, imitation-based tasks (i.e. experimental tasks where children remember something and do the same thing later). Declarative memory then develops substantially in the first two years of life. Interestingly, the timing of performance improvements corresponds to the developing brain's changes. For example, the rise in synapse production in brain areas used for memory roughly maps onto the ages when there are recall improvements.
Researchers working with infants as young as 6 months and have found that with age, infants remember for increasing lengths of time.
The time course of memory improvements with age (indexed behaviourally) is consistent with brain development. Late in the first year of life, the medial temporal lobe structures are functionally mature, and there are increases in the density of synapses in the prefrontal cortex. This corresponds to the improved recall abilities of babies then. Further improvements in recall reliability occur throughout the second year, corresponding to the continued increases in synapse formation in both the prefrontal cortex and dentate gyrus.
Babies remember "where" and "when" events took place (episodic memories). They correctly identify the locations in which specific events took place, even after 1 and 3 months. In a study of 13, 16 and 20 month old babies,
Studies have also found that babies initially preferred to look at familiar objects as they begin to process a stimulus. Once processing becomes more advanced, their preference shifts to the novel. As such, providing new objects for babies to look at will help stimulate the brain and encourage memory and processing.