Remembering and Forgetting Early Childhood - Paperback

by Qi Wang (Editor), Sami Gülgöz (Editor)

This book brings together scholarship that contributes diverse and new perspectives on childhood amnesia - the scarcity of memories for very early life events.

The topics of the studies reported in the book range from memories of infants and young children for recent and distant life events, to mother-child conversations about memories for extended lifetime periods, and to retrospective recollections of early childhood in adolescents and adults. The methodological approaches are diverse and theoretical insights rich. The findings together show that childhood amnesia is a complex and malleable phenomenon and that the waning of childhood amnesia and the development of autobiographical memory are shaped by a variety of interactive social and cognitive factors.

This book will facilitate discussion and deepen an understanding of the dynamics that influence the accessibility, content, accuracy, and phenomenological qualities of memories from early childhood. This book was originally published as a special issue of Memory.

Author Biography

Qi Wang is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. Her research examines individual and cultural mechanisms underlying autobiographical memory. She is the author of The Autobiographical Self in Time and Culture.

Sami Gülgöz is Professor of Psychology at Koç University. His past work includes topics varying from text processing to personality. In the last decade, he has concentrated on memory in everyday life, primarily autobiographical memory.