问答题 What"s your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you heard thunder or watched a television program? Adults seldom recall events much earlier than the year or so before entering school, just as children younger than three or four rarely retain any specific, personal experiences.
A variety of explanations have been proposed by psychologists for this "childhood amnesia"(儿童失忆症). One argues that the hippocampus, the region of the brain which is responsible for forming memories, does not mature until about the age of two. But the most popular theory maintains that, since adults do not think like children, they cannot reflect childhood memories. Adults think in words, and their life memories are like stories or narratives—one event follows another as in a novel or film. But when they search through their mental files for early childhood memories to add to this verbal life story, they don"t find any that fits the pattern It"s like trying to find a Chinese word in an English dictionary.
Now psychologist Annette Simms of the New York State University offers a new explanation for childhood amnesia. She argues that there simply aren"t any early childhood memories to recall. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use someone else"s spoken description of their personal experiences in order to turn their own short-term, quickly forgotten impressions of them into long-term memories. In other words, children have to talk about their experiences and hear others talk about theirs—Mother talking about the afternoon spent looking for seashells at the beach or Dad asking them about their day at Ocean park. Without this verbal reinforcement, says Dr. Simms, children cannot form permanent memories of their personal experiences.