ontributed to the early age at which events were remembered. If a sample from the general population were used, the mean age would conceivably go up. In reference to these two experiments, we can conclude that an event, which occurs when you are under three years old, can be recalled in adulthood. More interestingly though, was the display of substantial memory from two and a half years of age while memory from the first quarter of the second year is quite scarce. While these experiments provide no explanation for the occurrence of childhood amnesia, they do provide some illustration about the nature of the phenomenon itself.Mechanisms Contributing to Childhood Amnesia:The explanations for why childhood amnesia occurs are many. They range from a physiological basis to a lack of self-concept. The fact that human memory has many aspects, localized in different areas of the brain is well documented. The following information, combined with the empirical evidence related to the phenomenon leads me to believe that there are multiple systems responsible for its occurrence. Some early theories proposed that the failure to remember anything before the age of three was due to an immature nervous system and subsequently, the underdeveloped hippocampus. This theory cites a storage failure for the memory deficiencies including perceptual or neurological immaturity and inadequate encoding. The hippocampus has been shown to play an important part in the storage of long-term memories and it is not fully developed before age three. Nelson (1995) has studied the development of several structures in the brain and linked them with specific classifications of memory. The developmental approach to the emergence of memory systems states that a form of preexplicit memory dependant on the hippocampus is developed in the first few months of life. At the age of eight to twelve months, when the limbic and cortical structures mature a little more, exp...
