5 ms·

I didn't read the article, but when I got kids I was surprised they can actually remember for a very long time. Both of my kids could at e.g. 3 remember things

I didn't read the article, but when I got kids I was surprised they can actually remember for a very long time. Both of my kids could at e.g. 3 remember things that happened a year earlier, which still surprised me with the younger one. There was however a point when the older one could no longer remember some things from the past, as if there was a cutoff line to a previous life and he had transitioned into a new phase of his life.

leoedin 2y ago
That’s been my observation too. My completely amateur theory is that a young child’s perception of the world - their ability to contextualise what they’re looking at - changes so much that even if those old memories are still hanging around, they don’t really make sense any more. It’s more like a sliding window than a hard cutoff.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I read a similar discussion here on HN before and the explanation that its how our brain decodes memories shifting over time really hit me. I have a theory that if that in fact is the case, then things like journaling would help to retain memories in a superior way, since we can review such things as our encoding changes and retain it while we can still decode. Even if we dont remember it as richly though we will still be able to go back to a journal to remember something at a bare minimum.
magicalhippo 2y ago
I don't know what the state-of-the-art is, but there was some work done that suggested that memories are formed encoded in the language you know at the time of formation. I dug up some of this a while back[1]. My dad, who taught our language to immigrants, mentioned that it was known in that field that immigrants who lost their native language would also lose a lot of the knowledge they had from their home country, like stuff taught at schools. Thus the memories might be there, one just can't make sense of them anymore and so they become forgotten. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37204047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37204047
- sideshowb 2y ago
  I suspect it goes deeper than language even. We have associative memories, right? Given our learning, modelling, pigeonholing of the world along with our changing bodies, our older selves are unlikely to experience anything close enough to what our younger selves experienced to trigger that association and recall the memory.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    I'm approaching 70, and my mental model is that the graph is getting so big that it's getting harder to navigate through it to the memories I'm looking for.
- petemir 2y ago
  I'm currently finishing the related work of my PhD thesis which deals with memory, so I want to chime in to say that some studies [2] have tested this, i.e. that memory recall is tied to the linguistic environment in which the learning took place. [0] https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1242 https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1242 [1] https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.129.3.361 https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.129.3.361 [2] Nevertheless, I am usually dubious about multiple experiments confirming related things from the same author(s).
  - light_hue_1 2y ago
    The explanation can't be that neat. You can have a stroke and lose language and still retain and form memories. Maybe there's a subtle effect but that's very different.
    - petemir 2y ago
      > The explanation can't be that neat. It's not an absolute, I was telling OP that, in fact, there was some research on what he mentioned. Basically, that memory is linguistic-context dependent, but as a subset of cognitive-context dependent (as well as physiological-, affective-, and several types of context). This doesn't mean that memories are ONLY linked to language, they have lots of different associations, things that work as a cue of the memory, this (language) is only one of them. > You can have a stroke and lose language and still retain and form memories. What does it mean to "lose language"? Are you unable to speak, to express yourself, to comprehend others, all together? What memories do you retain and form? Are you talking about semantic memories, or episodic memories? How do you measure that those memories are retained and formed, if you cannot test the subject due to the impossibility of communication? It's a lot more difficult than absolutist statements. Edit: typo (thinks->things)
SwtCyber 2y ago
It's like there's a window where early memories seem pretty solid, and then suddenly parts of that window just vanish
- sdiupIGPWEfh 2y ago
  I'd go so far as to liken it to a series of memory wipes between age 3 to 4. Memory otherwise appears to function quite fine, from day to day and year to year, but then large blocks all vanish in rapid succession. Also interesting, as the article alludes to, is that infantile amnesia seems specifically related to episodic memory. Motor skills, language, and other learning obviously survives.
  - SwtCyber 2y ago
    Makes me wonder what the actual mechanism is behind deciding what sticks and what gets wiped
rng-concern 2y ago
I might be misremembering, but talking with a friend years ago he was talking about a "New Scientist" article that described how the brain is flushed/cleaned of most memories at age 4 and again at age 7. Or something like that. I was also surprised with my kids at 4-5 remembering when they were 3 or so, but now those memories seem to be completely, or near completely gone (at age 10). Perhaps they are just remembering the remembrance.
vel0city 2y ago
I experienced this with my older child. Ever since he could begin to talk he seemed to have exceptional memory, seemingly recalling things from even before he had words to describe them. But somewhere between 3 and 4 it's like there's been some culling of memories where a lot of things he would have known if you asked him on this third birthday he's seemingly forgotten by his 4th. Not enough to be concerned of any cognitive things, and he still otherwise seems to have an excellent memory.
- Buttons840 2y ago
  My child, at 8 or 9, remembered a game I used to play that scared her when she was 2 or 3. At 10 she could no longer remember the game.
naikrovek 2y ago
yeah i think enough rewiring and adaptation happens in the brain that the older memories are still around but are no longer stored in the way the brain needs them to be stored in to be accessible at an older age, or something like that. they become inaccessible as the brain matures its ability to remember effectively. anyone with kids knows that children remember all kinds of things, very, very early. habits, games, routines, schedules, things like that. these things are almost never able to be recalled later in life but they become part of your psyche somehow. for example you will often feel comforted when they are repeated later and you feel a bit "off" when they are done differently, even as an adult. I think a lot of parenting instinct is actually rooted in this kind of memory. The inclination to raise your children as you yourself were raised.

leoedin 2y ago

That’s been my observation too. My completely amateur theory is that a young child’s perception of the world - their ability to contextualise what they’re looking at - changes so much that even if those old memories are still hanging around, they don’t really make sense any more. It’s more like a sliding window than a hard cutoff.

giancarlostoro 2y ago
I read a similar discussion here on HN before and the explanation that its how our brain decodes memories shifting over time really hit me. I have a theory that if that in fact is the case, then things like journaling would help to retain memories in a superior way, since we can review such things as our encoding changes and retain it while we can still decode. Even if we dont remember it as richly though we will still be able to go back to a journal to remember something at a bare minimum.

magicalhippo 2y ago

I don't know what the state-of-the-art is, but there was some work done that suggested that memories are formed encoded in the language you know at the time of formation. I dug up some of this a while back[1]. My dad, who taught our language to immigrants, mentioned that it was known in that field that immigrants who lost their native language would also lose a lot of the knowledge they had from their home country, like stuff taught at schools. Thus the memories might be there, one just can't make sense of them anymore and so they become forgotten. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37204047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37204047

sideshowb 2y ago
I suspect it goes deeper than language even. We have associative memories, right? Given our learning, modelling, pigeonholing of the world along with our changing bodies, our older selves are unlikely to experience anything close enough to what our younger selves experienced to trigger that association and recall the memory.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  I'm approaching 70, and my mental model is that the graph is getting so big that it's getting harder to navigate through it to the memories I'm looking for.
petemir 2y ago
I'm currently finishing the related work of my PhD thesis which deals with memory, so I want to chime in to say that some studies [2] have tested this, i.e. that memory recall is tied to the linguistic environment in which the learning took place. [0] https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1242 https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1242 [1] https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.129.3.361 https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.129.3.361 [2] Nevertheless, I am usually dubious about multiple experiments confirming related things from the same author(s).
- light_hue_1 2y ago
  The explanation can't be that neat. You can have a stroke and lose language and still retain and form memories. Maybe there's a subtle effect but that's very different.
  - petemir 2y ago
    > The explanation can't be that neat. It's not an absolute, I was telling OP that, in fact, there was some research on what he mentioned. Basically, that memory is linguistic-context dependent, but as a subset of cognitive-context dependent (as well as physiological-, affective-, and several types of context). This doesn't mean that memories are ONLY linked to language, they have lots of different associations, things that work as a cue of the memory, this (language) is only one of them. > You can have a stroke and lose language and still retain and form memories. What does it mean to "lose language"? Are you unable to speak, to express yourself, to comprehend others, all together? What memories do you retain and form? Are you talking about semantic memories, or episodic memories? How do you measure that those memories are retained and formed, if you cannot test the subject due to the impossibility of communication? It's a lot more difficult than absolutist statements. Edit: typo (thinks->things)

SwtCyber 2y ago

It's like there's a window where early memories seem pretty solid, and then suddenly parts of that window just vanish

sdiupIGPWEfh 2y ago
I'd go so far as to liken it to a series of memory wipes between age 3 to 4. Memory otherwise appears to function quite fine, from day to day and year to year, but then large blocks all vanish in rapid succession. Also interesting, as the article alludes to, is that infantile amnesia seems specifically related to episodic memory. Motor skills, language, and other learning obviously survives.
- SwtCyber 2y ago
  Makes me wonder what the actual mechanism is behind deciding what sticks and what gets wiped

rng-concern 2y ago

I might be misremembering, but talking with a friend years ago he was talking about a "New Scientist" article that described how the brain is flushed/cleaned of most memories at age 4 and again at age 7. Or something like that. I was also surprised with my kids at 4-5 remembering when they were 3 or so, but now those memories seem to be completely, or near completely gone (at age 10). Perhaps they are just remembering the remembrance.

vel0city 2y ago

I experienced this with my older child. Ever since he could begin to talk he seemed to have exceptional memory, seemingly recalling things from even before he had words to describe them. But somewhere between 3 and 4 it's like there's been some culling of memories where a lot of things he would have known if you asked him on this third birthday he's seemingly forgotten by his 4th. Not enough to be concerned of any cognitive things, and he still otherwise seems to have an excellent memory.

Buttons840 2y ago
My child, at 8 or 9, remembered a game I used to play that scared her when she was 2 or 3. At 10 she could no longer remember the game.

naikrovek 2y ago

yeah i think enough rewiring and adaptation happens in the brain that the older memories are still around but are no longer stored in the way the brain needs them to be stored in to be accessible at an older age, or something like that. they become inaccessible as the brain matures its ability to remember effectively. anyone with kids knows that children remember all kinds of things, very, very early. habits, games, routines, schedules, things like that. these things are almost never able to be recalled later in life but they become part of your psyche somehow. for example you will often feel comforted when they are repeated later and you feel a bit "off" when they are done differently, even as an adult. I think a lot of parenting instinct is actually rooted in this kind of memory. The inclination to raise your children as you yourself were raised.