What’s your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you【C1】_____thunder or watched a television program? Adults seldom【C2】__events much earlier than the year or so before entering school, just as children younger than three or four【C3】_____retain any specific, personal experiences.

A variety of explanations have been【C4】_____by psychologists for this “childhood amnesia”. One argues that the hippocampus, the region of the brain which is responsible for forming memories, does not mature 【C5】__about the age of two. But the most popular theory【C6】__that, since adults do not think like children, they cannot【C7】__childhood memories. Adults think in words, and their life memories are like stories or【C8】_____ —one【C9】_____follows another —as in a novel or film. But when they search through their mental【C10】__for early childhood memories to add to this verbal life story, they don’t find any that fits the【C11】_____. It’s like trying to find a Chinese word in an English dictionary.

Now psychologist Annette Simms of the New York State University offers a new【C12】_____for childhood amnesia. She argues that there【C13】__aren’t any early childhood memories to recall. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use【C14】__spoken description of their personal experiences in order to turn their own short-term, quickly【C15】__impressions of them into long-term memories. In other【C16】__, children have to talk about their experiences and hear others talk about【C17】__—Mother talking about the afternoon【C18】__looking for seashells at the beach or Dad asking them about their day at Ocean park. Without this【C19】_____ reinforcement, says Dr. Simms, children cannot form 20 memories of their personal experiences.

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