Hello everyone, I'm Tempo Mom and have been brushing up on some similar videos lately:
Child: I remember things in my mother's belly.
Mom: What color is Mom's belly?
Child: Black with a red glow.
Mom: What's it like to be in it?
Kid: Hot with water/very crowded...
Mom: Can you hear anything?
Child: The sound of grunting.
Mom: What do you do in your mom's belly?
Child: Eat fingers with your eyes closed / Play with rope / Swim ...
Almost brushed to five or six children (the average age of about 5 years old), all said to remember things in the mother's belly, in order to verify the truth, the mother will ask the child some questions, the child's answers sound quite like that thing, very close to our adult cognition.
When do your children's earliest memories appear?
Let's first figure out the concept of the word "memory", memory is the human brain's response to experiencing things! If the child wants to describe the situation in the mother's belly, then the fetus should have the ability to remember, otherwise it will not be possible to talk about "what has been experienced". The fundamental question is: Is there any memory in the fetal period?
CCTV's public service advertisement "Organ Donation - Heartbeat", a crying baby, whether it is a gentle aunt, a sunny uncle, or a lovely sister, a kind grandmother, can not comfort him. Finally, the baby, in the arms of a strange uncle, stopped crying and began to smile because "Mommy's heart was transplanted to him a few months ago." ”
Seeing this advertisement, in addition to being deeply moved, it also tells us that babies in this period already have auditory memories. The mother's heartbeat is familiar and secure to the baby, and it is recognizable that it is the mother's heartbeat that quiets the baby.
Studies have shown that the fetus (7 or 8 months) already has auditory memory, and researchers put the sound of recording the mother's heartbeat to the baby, and the baby will stop crying.
In terms of the process of development during pregnancy, it is also consistent: most of the neurons of the brain have formed by 24 weeks (6 months), and the fetus responds to sounds.
At the end of the fetus, auditory memory has appeared, which shows that the baby has a certain memory ability at birth.
How to determine whether a newborn has memory ability?
A newborn has no language skills and cannot express what has happened, so how can we tell if he has the ability to remember? The researchers measured it from two indicators, "habituation" and "conditioned reflexes."
Habituation
After repeatedly presenting a stimulus to the baby, the infant's attention to the stimulus will decrease, that is, habituation will be formed. When a new stimulus appears, the baby decombines, manifests itself as more attentive to the new stimulus, and prolongs the gaze time.
In layman's terms, it is what we call "liking the new and tired of the old". When the mother always uses the rattle to coax the child, after a period of time, the rattle has no attraction to the child, and when it is replaced by a toy car, the child's attention shifts to the new toy. This kind of behavior of "liking the new and hating the old" just shows that the baby already has good discrimination ability and certain memory ability.
Some researchers have studied the perception and memory of infants with "habituation" and "decompositization", the first stage presents infant photos to infants for several consecutive days, the second stage presents baby photos to infants again, and at the same time presents another photo of bald men side by side, and when babies look at men's photos, their attention span is significantly longer than looking at baby photos. This experiment confirmed that newborns born 1 to 3 days old already have primitive memories.
conditioned reflex
When the infant makes a conditioned reflex to the stimulus, it indicates that the infant is able to recognize the stimulus, and then recognize it.
Conditioned reflexes are acquired, and the newborn's recognition of the feeding position is the first conditioned reflex that occurs in infants. The conditioned reflex to the feeding position appears about 10 days after the baby is born, and when the mother or other person holds the child in the feeding position, the child will make the action of feeding.
The child's familiarity with the feeding posture will form a conditioned reflex of feeding, which can also indicate that the newborn has a certain memory ability.
As we age, so do babies' memories.
2-3 months: short-term memory appears, when the object being gazed disappears from sight, you can use your eyes to find, but it lasts for a short time.
3-4 months: Getting to know people and things.
6 months: recognize the mother and commonly used bottles and other items, can distinguish between familiar people and strangers, the behavior of recognition.
8-9 months: Understand the concept of object permanence, know that invisible objects are still there.
1 year old: Prolonged memory of a familiar location appears.
After the age of 1.5: The emergence of language has given children a new characteristic to their memory. First, the ability to reproduce has developed, and the child has been able to remember short nursery rhymes and often heard small stories; secondly, intentional memory has begun to sprout, and adults have proposed memory tasks to the child, such as washing hands and brushing teeth, and the child has been able to remember.
Characteristics of memory in young children
We have determined that the newborn newborn has the ability to remember, but he does not have the ability to speak, so when he grows into a young child with language ability, is it not logical to "describe the situation in the mother's belly"? Let's first understand the characteristics of memory in early childhood.
Keep the time short
According to the Table Changes in Memory Retention Time in PreschoolEroles, we see:
1-year-old children can only recognize things that were perceived a few days ago, 2-year-old children can only recognize things that were perceived a few weeks ago, 3-year-old children can recognize things that were perceived a few months ago, 4-year-old children can recognize things that were perceived a year ago, and 7-year-old children can recognize things that were perceived three years ago. (Re-recognition refers to the ability to recognize a perceived thing when it reappears.) ）
In terms of the reproduction of memories, 1-year-old children have almost no ability to reproduce, 2-year-olds can reproduce things from a few days ago, 3-year-olds can reproduce things from a few weeks ago, 4-year-olds can reproduce things from a few months ago, and 7-year-olds can reproduce for more than a year. (Reproduction is recall, which refers to the ability to recall something experienced when it is not in front of you.) ）
Whether it is recognized or reproduced, it is gradually growing with age.
Early forgetfulness
In turn, we can also say that the younger the child's age, the shorter the memory retention time, and "forgetfulness" is the memory characteristic of preschool children! Parents can also try to recall how many things they can think of before the age of 3, I can't remember one.
Some scholars believe that juvenile forgetfulness is related to the development of the brain, the maturity of each region of the child's brain is not completed at the same time, the first developing area, undertakes the main memory task before the age of 3, with the development of other areas of the brain, the late mature brain region controls the first mature brain region, thus hindering the original learning of things, so that people can not recall what happened earlier.
Unintentional memory predominates
According to the purpose of memory and whether it requires the effort of the will, memory can be divided into unintentional memory and intentional memory.
Early childhood memory, with a great deal of unintentionality, the child will not take the initiative to ask himself to remember anything, he gains experience and knowledge, most of them are the result of unintentional memory. Children whose parents teach children can't remember, but they can remember TV commercials they see by chance, which is because unintentional memory is dominant, and the level of intentional memory is low.
Based on the characteristics of the child's memory, we can infer that the child has no way to remember things in the mother's stomach, because the reproduction memory cannot be maintained for so long. The reason why the child describes such an image may be derived from the mother's narration, or it may be learned through picture books and animations, or it may be that other children have heard about it...
"Mom, I remember things in your belly" sounds heartwarming, but not real.
Tianbao mother, family education instructor (senior), primary school Chinese teacher, a second-child mother with ideas, uses words to spread family parenting knowledge.