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The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade : Shots - Health News : NPR
by thenewgreen

    Francis Csedrik, who is 8 and lives in Washington, D.C., remembers a lot of events from when he was 4 or just a bit younger. There was the time he fell "headfirst on a marble floor" and got a concussion, the day someone stole the family car ("my dad had to chase it down the block"), or the morning he found a black bat (the furry kind) in the house.

    But Francis looks puzzled when his mom, Joanne Csedrik, asks him about a family trip to the Philippines when he was 3. "It was to celebrate someone's birthday," she tells him. "We took a long plane ride, two boat trips," she adds. Francis says he doesn't remember.

    That's a classic example of a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia. "Most adults do not have memories of their lives for the first 3 to 3 1/2 years," says Patricia Bauer, a professor of psychology at Emory University.