著者

森 津太子

出版者

甲南女子大学

雑誌

甲南女子大学研究紀要. 人間科学編 (ISSN:13471228)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, pp.19-25, 2003-03-18

---

Most people have difficulty remembering events that occurred in their first years of life. Such a phenomenon has been studied for about 100 years since Freud termed it "childhood/infantile amnesia" . This article reviews the literature on the earliest memory, the emergence of which indicates the end of the childhood amnesia period, and examines current theories of childhood amnesia. A variety of theories of childhood amnesia were divided into three categories for discussion (the retrieval failure theory, the encoding/retention failure theory, and the social interactive theory) from the perspective of whether the theory assumes that memory is a permanent storage system or not (i.e., the retrieval failure theory vs. the encoding retention failure theory) and whether the theory assumes that memory is an intrapersonal process or an interpersonal proc- ess (i.e., the retrieval failure theory and the encoding/retention failure theory vs. the social interaction theory) . Finally, the implications of childhood amnesia for recovered memory and future directions are discussed.