Week Three Post Two

There have been countless times in my life when my parents would ask me “Were you old enough to remember…” And my response would always be no, but I never understood exactly why I couldn’t remember those times. Experience and a specific amount of brain maturation are required in order to process and remember anything in life. Infants will show the largest struggle with storing new memories within their first year. One cause of this is linguistics because people tend to build and represent memories with language, so if you have a minimum vocabulary or none at all, it will be difficult to retain stories. A study on three month olds was done by researchers to prove that memory is fragile in early life. In the experiment they tied a string to the infant’s foot and the other end of the string was attached to a crib mobile, as the infant would kick the mobile would move. The infants caught onto this pattern and would kick more frequently and vigorously. After a two-week break of the environment only some infants could remember the connection between kicking and the mobile.  It takes time for an infant to build a memory because their bodies are just starting development. I think this reasoning stemmed the saying, “She is just a baby and there is no way she will remember this.” The statement is accurate it has been proven in multiple studies that you will not remember anything from your infant days. From around nine months to your first year of age is when your memory becomes more apparent. Which is said to be the same age you begin speaking your first words.