Childhood amnesia

Childhood amnesia, also called infantile amnesia, is the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories before the age of 2–4 years, as well as the period before age 10 of which adults retain fewer memories than might otherwise be expected given the passage of time. For the first 1–2 years of life, brain structures such as the limbic system, which holds the hippocampus and the amygdala and is involved in memory storage, are not yet fully developed. Research has demonstrated that children can remember events from before the age of 3–4 years, but that these memories decline as children get older.

Research has shown that children have the capacity to remember events that happened to them from age 1 and before while they are still relatively young, but as they get older they tend to be unable to recall memories from their youngest years. Psychologists differ in defining the offset of childhood amnesia. Some define it as the age from which a first memory can be retrieved; research using this definition of offset typically occurs around 3.5 years but can range from 2 to 5 years, depending on the memory retrieval method. Others define offset of childhood amnesia as the age at which memories change from general memories to more specific autobiographical events; this occurs at approximately 4.5 years of age. This may be due to children's developing accurate knowledge of their own memory. It is generally agreed there is no set age that people should be able to remember events from.