... makes them accessible in a later situation. Considering the nature of infantile amnesia and our limited knowledge of the functioning of memory, it is understandable that methodological and explanation difficulties occur, which make in infantile amnesia remain a mystery in spite all our efforts. The study of infantile amnesia poses inherent methodological difficulties. First of all, asking adults to recall their earliest memories is methodologically unsafe, as the memories may be confabulated and estimates far from precise. Thus, these reported early memories is hard to verify, while there are problems distinguishing between 'told' memories and 'true' memories. Indeed, identifying events that are of importance to a child that can be precisely dated and verified by a third party can be a difficult task. However, it has been suggested that the birth of a brother or sister falls into this category of salient for the child events, and has thus ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now