![]() ![]() Howe and Courage (1997) propose that infants lack a self-concept, and hence cannot relate memories to the self. For example, Newcombe (e.g., Balcomb et al., 2011 Newcombe et al., 2014) propose that infants cannot bind elements of representations (e.g., time, place, actors, etc.) into events. The first of the complementary processes (or perhaps better, complementary explanations) is that infants lack some of the abilities needed to form episodic memories. We will argue that it is the onset of locomotion, first crawling and then walking, that provides the conditions for hippocampal place cell and grid cell development, and that in turn allows for long-term storage and retrieval of autobiographical memories. ![]() We take that theory as a starting point, but add what we think is a crucial component based on embodiment, namely, the onset of locomotion. Bauer (2015) reviews these theories and explicates her Complementary Processes theory. There is no lack of theories to account for IA and CA. We will propose a developmental hypothesis that explains IA and CA using similar mechanisms. That is, in addition to IA, there is childhood amnesia (CA e.g., Newcombe et al., 2011) when childhood experiences are forgotten more quickly than would be predicted based on adult-like memory. ![]() Even in toddlers and young children up to the age of about seven, fewer episodic memories can be retrieved than would be predicted on the basis of adult rates of forgetting ( Bauer, 2015). But there is a curious lack of episodic, autobiographical memory. In fact the infant is learning a tremendous amount about bodily control ( Adolph, 1997), language ( Bruderer et al., 2015), goals ( Sommerville et al., 2005), categories ( Smith, 2005), causality ( Rakison and Krogh, 2010), and more. Infantile amnesia (IA) is the well-documented phenomenon describing how most people (including children) explicitly recall little or nothing from the first few years of life. Finally, given a reduction in self-locomotion and exploration with aging, the hypothesis suggests a partial explanation for cognitive decline with aging. Furthermore, as the mode of human locomotion shifts from crawling to walking, there is an additional shift in the alignment of the hippocampus that marks the beginning of adult-like episodic memory and the end of CA. That is, because the animal can now reliably discriminate locations, location becomes a stable cue for memories. Specifically, the onset of locomotion prompts the alignment of hippocampal place cells and grid cells to the environment, which in turn facilitates the ontogeny of long-term episodic memory and the end of IA. But why does the hippocampus mature at one time and not another, and how does that maturation relate to memory? Our hypothesis is rooted in theories of embodied cognition, and it provides an explanation both for hippocampal development and the end of IA. Evidence suggests that IA occurs across altricial species, and a number of studies using animal models have converged on the hypothesis that maturation of the hippocampus is an important factor. 2Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USAĪt least since the late nineteenth century, researchers have sought an explanation for infantile amnesia (IA)-the lack of autobiographical memories dating from early childhood-and childhood amnesia (CA), faster forgetting of events up until the age of about seven.1Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. ![]()
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