Infantile Amnesia

Infantile Amnesia is a topic that I found really interesting in class. I had never actually thought about this topic before. Why is it that we can't remember our childhood experiences before a certain age? When this topic was brought up in class I remembered one of my first clear chilhood memories. I remember that I was living in Italy with my mom and grandma and I clearly remember that our neighbor had a huge fat gray cat named Corey. I use to love this cat, but since I was little I was always annoying the poor cat until one day, this is a really clear memory that I have, the cat scratched me but not just anywhere he scratched me right in the eye, from then on I remember being afraid of cats as a little girl. It is funny that out of all my memories in Italy this seems to be the one that I remember with more detail, perhaps because it had a big impact for me as a little girl, and probably because I went and told my grandma and mom about it. Since I was able to share what happened with my family as well as them talking about the event with me, maybe that is why I remember it so clearly. Also living in Italy was a happy moment in my life, perhaps we tend to remember happy memories more than sad memories.

There are many theories regarding infantile amnesia. One of them is the language explanation. Some argue that the incomplete development of language in young children may be the cause of childhood amnesia. Through the sharing of language we are able to form mental representation and can remember events better than when we don't talk about an event. In my case perhaps the sharing of the event helped me form a mental representation and also the emotional state that I was in got engraved differently in my memory and perhaps that is why I remember this much better than other things that happened when I was there.

I also have some memories that are even earlier but not so vivid, kind of like dream-like memories, I remember being in a bus with my grandma in Peru, I was about 3 or 4 and a lady was saying how cute I was and that I looked so much like my grandma. I remember crying so hard and later telling my grandma that the lady said I looked like an old lady. This memory is not very vividly but sometimes I wonder if I really do remember this memory or maybe it was planted by my grandma who would always remember the event and tell it to everyone since she found it funny. Perhaps some memories are real while others are implanted in our memories by our parents but whatever really is the cause I think that infantile amnesia is an interesting topic with many explanations that all seem accurate.
I think that a lot of the theories seem to have a lot of support for why we may not remember our first years of life but the ones that seem could be the cause are the language explanation theory as well as the physical development explanation in which it suggests that perhaps children's mind is not mentally mature enough to create long-lasting autobiographical memories, it is not until 3 that children develop brain areas such as prefrontal cortex which is associated with the formation of memories.