Research has shown that having more elaborate conversations with infant children could lead to more detailed accounts of personal memories later in life, writes Jonathon O’Brien
Sophie McBain (The big idea: are memories fact or fiction?, 11 September) raises some interesting questions about “infantile amnesia”, a phenomenon first named by Sigmund Freud. In recent years, research into infantile amnesia has provided data on the impact of social factors on childhood memory development.
Experiments have shown, for example, that more elaborate parental conversation with children between 20 and 29 months was associated with subsequently more detailed accounts of personal memories by the children.
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