In experiments introducing both two and four-month delays between the event and the re-enactment, the results demonstrated infants were capable of deferred imitation. (1995) assessed long-term memory and recall by requiring subjects to re-enact past events from memory. However, animal experimentation has demonstrated the infantile amnesia phenomena is not unique to humans. The retrieval failure hypothesis states that all our early life experiences are present in long-term memory but cannot be recalled for reasons unknown. Without the ability to share memories and tell stories, we are unable to embellish and give memories context. Without language, we are unable to articulate memories that relate to our pre-verbal stage. There is also suggestion that whilst the basic mechanisms and contributing factors may be consistent, the ways in which they manifest themselves may be different across cultures. Psychologists posit that the ability to store memories long-term is related to the development of language, theory of mind, sense of self, cognitive and social discontinuity, early parent-child memory sharing and the complexity of life experience. Freud first described the phenomena in 1949, and the paradox of adults having few memories of early childhood despite the learning capacity of young children has attracted many explanations from the psychoanalytical to the neurobiological. Infantile amnesia is obvious to all of us the moment we attempt recall of memories from early life.
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