The Fate of Childhood Memories: Children Postdated Their Earliest Memories as They Grew Older

Differences in the sexual health information parents/guardians give their adolescent sexual minority sons by outness

Introduction

Parents and guardians are a potentially valuable source of sexual health information for adolescent sexual minority males (ASMM). The current study examines what sexual health topics ASMM report discussing with a parent/guardian and whether topics differ by outness about sexual attraction to other males.

Methods

ASMM (N=154; ages 14-17) in the United States completed the baseline of an online sexual health intervention pilot in 2020. They reported which of twelve sexual health topics they discussed with a parent/guardian and if they had disclosed their sexual attraction to other males. Associations between topics discussed and outness to a parent/guardian were examined with Firth logistic regression.

Results

Eighty-eight (57%) participants reported being out to a parent/guardian. Six sexual health topics were significantly more likely to be discussed if participants were out. The three categories with the largest differences by outness were how to: discuss with a partner what they would not like to do sexually (aOR = 7.0, 95% CI: 2.0-24.6), use condoms (aOR = 5.9, 95% CI: 2.3-15.1), and prevent HIV/AIDS (aOR = 3.5, 95% CI = 1.4-8.7).

Conclusions

Interventions on parental/guardian provision of sexual health information are needed to ensure ASMM receive relevant sexual health knowledge.

What is your earliest memory? It depends

This article is a selective review of the literature on childhood amnesia, followed by new analyses of both published and unpublished data that has been collected in my laboratory over two decades. Analyses point to the fluidity of people's earliest memories; furthermore, methodological variation leads to individuals recalling memories from substantially earlier in their lives. How early one's "earliest" memory is depends on whether you have multiple interviews, how many early memories were requested within an interview, the type of interview, participation in prior tasks, etc. As well, people often provide chronologically earlier memories within the same interview in which they later identify a chronologically older memory as their "earliest". There may also be systematic mis-dating to older ages of very early memories. Overall, people may have a lot more memories from their preschool years than is widely believed, and be able to recall events from earlier in their lives than has been historically documented.

New perspectives on childhood memory: introduction to the special issue

This special issue brings together the scholarship that contributes diverse new perspectives on childhood amnesia - the scarcity of memories for very early life events. The topics of the studies reported in the special issue range from memories of infants and young children for recent and distant life events, to mother-child conversations about memories for extended lifetime periods, and to retrospective recollections of early childhood in adolescents and adults. The methodological approaches are diverse and theoretical insights rich. The findings together show that childhood amnesia is a complex and malleable phenomenon and that the waning of childhood amnesia and the development of autobiographical memory are shaped by a variety of interactive social and cognitive factors. This collective body of work will facilitate discussion and deepen our understanding of the dynamics that influence the accessibility, content, accuracy, and phenomenological qualities of memories from early childhood.

Long-term autobiographical memory across middle childhood: patterns, predictors, and implications for conceptualizations of childhood amnesia

We examined recall of events by children 4-11 years to inform patterns of retention of autobiographical memories as well as factors that predict their survival. 101 children participated in a 4-year prospective study. At study inception, children were 4, 6, and 8 years. They were tested annually for three more years for a total of four waves of data collection. At each wave, we obtained narrative reports of recent (all waves) and distant (Waves 2-4) events, resulting in virtually continuous sampling of memories formed by 4- to 11-year-olds and recalled after 1-3-year delays. We also measured children's language, and domain-general and memory-specific cognitive skills. Multi-level modelling revealed age-related increases in the likelihood of survival of memories over the delays. Critically, the rate of increase in retention of individual memories was the same across the cohorts. In addition to age, thematic coherence of original memory reports predicted memory survivability. Other factors were not predictive. The dense sampling and prospective tracking of memories across the 4-11-year age period permitted an especially strong test for continuity versus discontinuity in autobiographical memory across the second half of the first decade of life. The data are strongly indicative of continuity and gradual change.

Manipulating the reported age in earliest memories in a Dutch community sample

BACKGROUND

Childhood amnesia in adults can be defined as the relative paucity of autobiographical memories from the first years of life. An earlier study by Wessel, Schweig and Huntjens demonstrated that 'how' we ask for an earliest memory may bias adults' estimations of when the earliest childhood memory actually happened. They suggested that snapshot memories (i.e., mental pictures) were less sensitive to an age manipulation than event memories (i.e. narratives). We aimed at replicating and extending these findings using a Dutch community sample stratified for age, gender and educational level.

METHOD

Participants (N = 619) were randomized into one of three experimental conditions. Prior to recalling their earliest memory, participants in the early and late conditions were presented with examples referring to memories from age 1-2 or 5-6, respectively. The example memories in the control group did not contain any age cues. Participants reported the estimated age in their earliest memory and their strategy for arriving at this estimate. They also rated their memory's phenomenology (e.g. vividness). Independent judges rated memory type (e.g., snapshot memories).

RESULTS

Compared to the control group, participants in the early condition estimated the age in their memory to be significantly earlier. The difference between the late and control conditions was too small to be of interest. We did not observe a statistically significant interaction between memory type and condition. Snapshot memories were from a younger age than event memories and showed differences with respect to phenomenology (e.g., emotional intensity).

CONCLUSION

The results of this community study replicate earlier findings that instructions including age cues influence estimates of age in earliest memories. Although snapshot and event memories seem to be qualitatively different, the idea that they respond differently to an age manipulation could not be corroborated.

Manipulating the reported age in earliest memories

Previous work suggests that the estimated age in adults' earliest autobiographical memories depends on age information implied by the experimental context [e.g., Kingo, O. S., Bohn, A., & Krøjgaard, P. (2013). Warm-up questions on early childhood memories affect the reported age of earliest memories in late adolescence. Memory, 21(2), 280-284. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.729598 ] and that the age in decontextualised snippets of memory is younger than in more complete accounts (i.e., event memories [Bruce, D., Wilcox-O'Hearn, L. A., Robinson, J. A., Phillips-Grant, K., Francis, L., & Smith, M. C. (2005). Fragment memories mark the end of childhood amnesia. Memory & Cognition, 33(4), 567-576. doi: 10.3758/BF03195324 ]). We examined the malleability of the estimated age in undergraduates' earliest memories and its relation with memory quality. In Study 1 (n = 141), vignettes referring to events happening at age 2 rendered earlier reported ages than examples referring to age 6. Exploratory analyses suggested that event memories were more sensitive to the age manipulation than memories representing a single, isolated scene (i.e., snapshots). In Study 2 (n = 162), asking self-relevant and public-event knowledge questions about participants' preschool years prior to retrieval yielded comparable average estimated ages. Both types of semantic knowledge questions rendered earlier memories than a no-age control task. Overall, the reported age in snapshots was younger than in event memories. However, age-differences between memory types across conditions were not statistically significant. Together, the results add to the growing literature indicating that the average age in earliest memories is not as fixed as previously thought.

Childhood Amnesia in Children: A Prospective Study Across Eight Years

This was a prospective study of earliest memories across 8 years for 37 children who were of age 4-9 years initially. In three interviews (initial and after 2 and 8 years) children provided their three earliest memories; those from earlier interviews that were not spontaneously provided later were cued. There was little consistency in the earliest memory or overlap across interviews in spontaneous memories. The youngest group also forgot over half their initial memories although few were forgotten by older children. For consistency of content, 25%-32% of information by former 6- to 9-year-olds was the same after 8 years, but < 10% provided by the youngest children was the same and 22% was contradictory. Emotion and contextual coherence predicted memory retention.