They forget school supplies, homework, errands we give them… Children’s absent-mindedness is common and becomes one of the main reasons parents consult Psychology and Psychopedagogy centres. The causes of these forgetfulness are multiple and sometimes they are due to an underlying disorder, but fortunately, in most cases the problem lies in the immaturity of the child’s nervous system.
The brain develops unevenly
Cognitive abilities, such as attention and memory, develop with age and are conditioned by the level of neurological maturity. Little by little, children achieve greater control over their attentional processes so that, although at 2 years of age they pay attention to a stimulus for only 7 minutes, at 5 years of age they manage to concentrate on that same stimulus for an average of 14 minutes.
In fact, the amount of brain development that takes place during the first years of childhood is astonishing. Just think that the weight of a child’s brain increases from 25% to 75% of what the adult brain will be in just the first two years of life. However, not all areas of the brain develop at the same speed, especially those involved in memory.
For example, the cells that make up the hippocampus, an essential structure for the formation of memories, are already formed at the end of the prenatal period, but the cells of the dentate gyrus, a structure that links the hippocampus to the cortical regions, do not appear until the first year of life.
Children remember partially
A very interesting study conducted at Ohio State University has revealed new clues to understanding how children’s memory works. According to these researchers, the key to forgetfulness lies in the fact that children do not have a good episodic memory.
In fact, memory does not only involve remembering the facts but also where and when they happened. This is known as episodic memory, which develops primarily after the age of 7. Therefore, younger children may not have difficulty remembering simple facts or events but may find it difficult to frame them in time and space.
In the experiment, children between 4 and 7 years old were shown images of different pairs of objects. The interesting thing is that they were shown some pairs while they were inside a red toy house and others inside a blue house. The children not only had to remember the pairs of objects but also in which houses they had been shown them. Thus, it was observed that the children did not usually have problems linking two objects together but they forgot the context in which they had seen them.
These results tell us that we need to readjust our demands and expectations on children’s memory. For example, a young child might remember that math classes are in the morning and reading in the afternoon, but would probably forget that one day a week the class schedule is reversed. To remember these kinds of details requires a much more complex memory structure, which normally develops after the age of 7.
Today we also know that the processes of familiarity and memory retrieval follow different paths within the brain. For example, when a child recognises a person or identifies a place, an automatic process occurs that is ready to work perfectly around the age of 5. However, when a child must consciously search his or her memory to retrieve certain details, this retrieval process is more complex and begins to form around the age of 3-4 but ends its development in adolescence.
We must consider that memory is not a simple reservoir of information that works automatically. We also need to be able to reinforce memories and to be able to access them consciously. Children do not have very developed these capacities and do not have strategies or techniques that allow them to remember easily. Therefore, the next time your little one forgets something, do not get upset. Be patient and remember that the key is not to overwhelm him with different orders because he probably will not be able to remember them all.
References:
Yim, H. et. Al. (2013) The Development of Episodic Memory. Items, Contexts and Relations. Psychological Science; 24(11): 2163-2172.
Yonelinas, A. P. et. Al. (2005) Separating the brain regions involved in recollection and familiarity in recognition memory. Journal of Neuroscience; 25(11):3002-3008.
Seress, L. (2001) Morphological changes of the human hippocampal formation from midgestation to early childhood. In: Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge; MIT Press: 45-58.
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