ABSTRACT

To the general public, it seems intuitively unlikely that the memories of preverbal human infants could in any way resemble our own. The belief that the memories of infants and adults are fundamentally different is treated as a fact in general psychology and child development texts, in the popular press, and even by well-known scientists. Our common inability to recollect what happened when we were infants (“infantile amnesia”) lends credence to this belief-but it is wrong. The present chapter documents why.