eli5: Why do most people have no memories from before age 4 or 5 years old?
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One factor is of course that the brain takes time to develop. They mention that episodic memories usually start around 3-4 years of age.
Some people mentioned how memory is linked to language, but this isn’t proven. If it were true, people who learned language late would naturally start to form memories later. This correlation would be possible to check for, but I don’t know if anyone has done it.
Language may be a contributing factor, but I think it mostly comes down to the fact that you are *do* actually have memories from before you’re 3-4, just not *episodic* ones. An episodic memory is basically “this specific thing happened”. You do however form associative memories. These are more general and are the type that go: “If I cry, caregiver will give me attention”, “cat hurts”, “shape goes into the square hole”. It also includes language, and you could argue that language strengthens associative language.
In this fase we learn what things are, but you don’t really need language to recognize a cat, just to call it a cat. You just have to see a cat enough times to form a concept of cat in your head, and thus you recognize it as something distinct from a bowl or an apple.
These concepts are important for episodic memory; if you don’t know what a cat or an apple is, it is hard to form a memory that goes: “my cat jumped on the counter and knocked over a bowl of apples”.
If you were attacked by a cat before the age of three you might be scared of cats because the event may have formed your concept of what a cat is, but you won’t necessarily have an episodic memory of it happening.
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