Although it is something rare, some people can remember experiences that happened to them when they were not even three years old. In general, most people begin to forge their memories in their heads after the age of three or four. About early childhood, the most common thing is to suffer a kind of childhood amnesia that makes it very difficult for us to remember absolutely nothing of what happened before reaching that age.
And, sometimes, although we think we remember a specific event, it may not really be due to how our head as children processed that event, but rather to the reconstruction that our mind has made later thanks to the story we have heard from of our parents or relatives.
The magic box experiment
However, a study published in 2011 in the journal Child Development and prepared by researcher from the University of Otago (New Zealand) Fiona Jack shows that some children were already able to store memories clearly at the very early age of two years. .
Jack conducted an experiment he called the “Magic Shrinking Box” with a total of 46 children between the ages of 27 and 51 months. In it, the little ones placed a toy on top of a “magic box”, activated a lever and the toy disappeared and, in its place, another miniature toy appeared through the box, accompanied by striking sounds and lights.
For two days, the researchers taught the children to use the machine and on the third day they interviewed them asking if they knew how to use the machine and were awarded a medal for participating. Six years later , when the tweens were between the ages of ten and twelve, the research team interviewed them again, showing them a medal like the one they had been awarded in their day and asking them if they remembered what it was.
Only a fifth of the children remembered it , but of them, two were less than three years old at the beginning of the experiment. Apparently the one thing that all those who did preserve the event in their memory had in common was that for the weeks following it they had been continually talking about their experience with the box. Which made the researchers think that communication and verbalization could help exercise memory from a very young age.
