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Why can’t we remember being babies?
Source: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/why-not-remember-babies.htm
By: Laurie L. Dove
You gaze at the cheerful crowd gathered around you, take a curious look at the chocolate cake set before you and then, just as the everyone starts singing “Happy Birthday,” you do what comes naturally: smash the cake with both hands.
This scenario would be weird, except for the fact that you’re sitting in a highchair. Which would be even weirder, except that you’re turning 1.
Chances are you don’t remember your first or second birthday party — or a host of other events that occurred in early childhood — and you’re not alone. It’s normal to forget your earliest life experiences, despite their crucial and influential nature.
Most adults can’t recall life’s earliest moments unless the events are reinforced by others who often retell them, or the memories are triggered by photographs or other cues.
It’s a phenomenon scientists call childhood amnesia. While you may have been able to recall and describe your second birthday party in great detail for months after it happened, a year later those memories may have faded and, eventually, are lost altogether.
Researchers point to a high turnover rate of childhood memories as one possible culprit, believing that a raft of new experiences simply means some early memories are forced to fall by the wayside.
Up until age 3, children in one study could recall significant events that happened to them within the last year. The high rate of recall continued until age 7, with the study’s participants remembering up to 72 percent of the same events they’d recalled as 3-year-olds. By age 8 or 9, however, most could recollect only 35 percent of the life experiences they’d so vividly described at 3 .
The change, concluded researchers, comes from the way memories are formed as children age. Beginning at 7, children store increasingly linear memories that fit succinctly into a sense of time and space. The very act of remembering events and categorizing them within this personal timeline may cause retrieval induced forgetting, a process that causes older children and adults to prune life’s earliest memories as they recall specific details about other events .
30 Photos Of Children Playing Around The World
Source: http://www.boredpanda.com/happy-children-playing/
No matter their cultural background, no matter their economic situation, kids will always find imaginative ways to have fun. Their wild imaginations and magical childhood moments, when captured on camera by talented photographers, can make for truly wonderful photos. These 33 images we collected will prove that childhood can be wonderful no matter where you go.
Many in the Western world fear that technology is making today’s children lose touch with nature and with their own creativity, and while there are arguments to be made for the intellectual stimulation that apps and programs for children can bring, there’s also something to be said for simply playing with a stick in the mud or chasing dandelion seeds though an open meadow.
For better or worse, the children in these photos seem entirely content making their own fun. For us adults, it’s important not to let our world-weary and jaded experience stifle our childish hopefulness and imagination!
INDONESIA
Image credits: Gede Lila Kantiana, I Gede Lila Kantiana, Ipoenk Graphic
RUSSIA
Image credits: Elena Shumilova, Светлана Квашина
BURKINA FASO
Image credits: Òscar Tardío
MYANMAR
Image credits: Chan Kwok Hung
TAJIKISTAN
Image credits: Damon Lynch
INDIA
Image credits: Mukund Images, Sudharsan Ravikumar, Sandee Pachetan
VIETNAM
Image Credits: HT KëñShï
GHANA
Image credits: Terry White
ESTONIA
Image credits: Elika Hunt
THAILAND
Image credits: Sarawut Intarob
SOUTH AFRICA
Image credits: tinosoriano.com, Muhammed Muheisen
PERU
Image credits: Enrique Castro-Mendivil
ETHIOPIA
Image credits: Csilla Zelko
ITALY
Image credits: Michael Potyomin
USA
Image credits: Jake Olson
INDONESIA #2
Image Credits: Mio Cade, Hendrik Priyanto, James Khoo, Rio Rinaldi Rachmatullah
UGANDA
Image credits: John Van Den Hende
ROMANIA
Image credits: Elena Simona Craciun
RUSSIA #2
Image credits: Elena Shumilova