Human Memory Development - Essay Example

? Psychology College: Human memory development Memory refers to the ability of human beings to retain information regarding events that happened in the past during their life experience. Memory development is a process that occurs during most of the lifetime of any individual, and especially during the early stages of development. Though there is a great variation in the memories that human beings can store, it is surprising how human beings can remember more events that happened during a specific age of their life than another. For instance, there is the tendency of people to retain a greater memory of things that happened during their early adulthood than those that happened during their childhood. This behaviour has garnered much attention from many psychologists, inciting them to conduct a deeper research into the development of the human memory. This paper seeks to evaluate the various theoretical frameworks that psychologists have put forward to explain the development of human memory capacity during the various phases of life. Studies in biology indicate that memory development starts as early as at the age of 2, subject to slight variation due to the uniqueness of the genetic make-up of human beings. However, memory at this stage is quite suppressed and such infants are likely to forget what happens in just a couple of seconds, memory has been placed into two major groups; the semantic memory and autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory refers to the capacity of human beings to keep a record of the events that happened during their lifetime, while semantic memory refers to the capacity to hold information about the world and more so the surroundings. The functionality of these memories is peculiar in all human beings and the size of each type of memory differs among the entire human race. Consequently, some individual will possess a greater autobiographical memory and a smaller semantic memory. Such individual will tend to remember things that happened during their life in a better way that how they remember issues that they learn in class (Nobuo, 2002, p. 37: Barrouiet & Gaillard, 2012, p. 149). ). The reason as to why one memory system pre-dominates the other remains a mystery to be cracked for many psychologists. However, there is a concession that the two types of memories function quite differently in all human beings. The cognitive Neuroscience concept of memory growth in human beings has received lot recognition due its scientific background. This model of human memory development pays attention to the development of the memory system right from the time a child is born. The idea that can be derived from this scientific theory is that human memory can either be implicit or explicit (Gazzaniga, 2004, p. 51). They associate the implicit memory with the early-development of the brain system that occurs during the early stages of child development. On the other hand, explicit memory develops during the late stage of development when the advanced memory structures of the brain such as hippocampus reach maturity (p. 56). The reason why implicit memory grows more rapidly is because it is dependent on structures such as cerebellum that mature quite early. This theory associates the variation of memory capacity along the different phases of life to the development of the axons of the central nervous system that continuously develop as an individual grows old (p. 93). The believe of these researchers is that the ability of individuals to retain information increases as the age advances. There has been a significant controversy over the existence of memory in young children. Given that memory refers to the ability of human beings to retain information, it is possible to say that children have no memory since there is nothing that they can remember from their infancy, especially at the age of 2 years (Nobuo, 2002, p. 35). This is an argument that seems against the idea put forward by the neuroscientists concerning the maturation of brain structures at a very early age. The question that arises is why many children tend to have a special liking for their mothers. For instance, children as young as 3 months will be seen to prefer and recognize the sound of their mother more than those from strangers. The only feasible explanation of such a phenomenon is the ability of the child to retain the sound of their mother within their brain system. The scientific model of memory development seems to provide a satisfying and reliable explanation for all aspects of memory growth. Researchers such as Siegler (2000, p. 32-38) have developed the concept of long term and short term memory that determines how long information is stored in the brain. This researcher points out that children at the age of 4 to 5 years have a shallow memory that is only capable of retaining information for a very short time. The reason he provides for this is that the memory develops with age as individuals acquire more knowledge and experience. Therefore, those experiences that happen during the late stages of development tend to remain more vivid and can be retrieved from the brain more effectively. His research provides that there is a stage of optimal brain capacity that occurs during the early adulthood. At this time, there is the tendency of human beings to remember almost every issue that occurs during this time, which he refers to as long term memory. In older age, the memory may seem to experience a spontaneous drop, a phenomenon that is more common in the aged. Siegler seems to concur with the idea developed by the neuro-scientists regarding the progressive growth of the brain. A more interesting theory was developed by Baddeley (2007, p. 5-35), which is now well known as Baddeley’s model of working memory. Baddeley contributed to the studies of memory development by considering three basic parts of the memory; the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketch pad. The central-executive part is responsible for the poor memory in children below the age of 4 years, due to the complex processing associated with this portion of the memory. The phonological part develops as children in children between the age of 4 years and adolescent, and allows storage of information in specific memory locations responsible for storage (p. 16). Children at this stage can process information more quickly, store more of it and retrieve it quite easily. The last part of this model is the visuo-spatial sketchpad, which defined the ability to recognize three dimension objects and images. The Baddeley model indicates that there is a memory capacity surge between the age of four years and adolescent, which explains why older children remember more events that happened after their adolescent stage. Although many researchers agree that the memory capacity increases linearly with the age of an individual, there is still a lot of evidence that at times younger people may be able to recall more of their experiences even more than their elders. In other words, there exist individuals who deviate from the linear relationship that ties age and memory capacity. Dr. Flynn (2004) appreciates that memory efficiency of individuals varies among different people just like it happens with cognitive skills. The variation in efficiency of the long term memory is hereditary and hence depends more on the family history (Weinert & Schneider, 1995, p. 7). However, a Dr. Flyn point out that memory improvement is feasible through memory training as it boosts the ability of one to organize stored information. In addition, this philosopher seems to believe in selective retention of information, which allows one to retain information that is only relevant in their experiences. Therefore, the reason why people at middle age seem to store more information is because most experiences at this stage have a meaning in their lives. If this idea is something to go by, it means that the memory capacity of children can be boosted by subjecting them to practice and teaching them information processing methods. The issue of memory capacity has largely shaped the education structure all over the world (Barrouiet & Gaillard, 2012, p. 202). The teaching methods adopted in various levels of learning seem to originate from the idea of memory structure provided by Baddeley among others. For instance, teaching at low academic levels is dominated by recitation techniques and use of spatial objects to facilitate the understanding which fits the idea of phonological loop and visuo-sketchpad. In addition, the syllabus at this level is slimmer than that used in higher level of education. In university education, the students are at their middle age and hence are subjected to more elaborate learning characterized with more content and less emphasis during content delivery. In brief, education structure is based on the theory that brain development is more during the middle age than it is at a lower age. In summary, research into memory development in human beings seems to converge at the conclusion that the human brain grows as the age of an individual increases up to a specific age where the process is retarded. The ability to recollect information regarding events that occurred in the past can be attributed to the ability of the memory to store information and retrieve it when necessary. Though there is a great variation on the memory capacity among individual even of the same age, it is possible to generalize that individuals retain more information during their early adulthood than when they are under the adolescent age. However, research shows that it is possible to improve the memory characteristics of the brain by subjecting individuals to memory training. The study of memory development has formed a platform for the modelling of the education system all over the world. References Baddeley, D., 2007. Working Memory, Thought and Action. London: Oxford University Press. Barrouiet, P. and Gaillard, V., 2012. Cognitive Development and Working Memory. ` Britain: Psychology Press. Flynn, A., (2004).The development of Memory. [Online] Available at: Gathercole, S., 2003. The development of memory. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39(1) 3-27. [Online] Available at: < journals.cambridge.org/action/ displayJournal?jid=CPP? > Gazzaniga, M., 2004. The Cognitive Neurosciences. Massachusetts: MIT press Nobuo, O., 2002. Lifespan development of Human memory. Britain: MIT press Siegler, R. S. (2000). Children's Thinking. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Weinert, F. and Schneider, W., 1995. Memory Performance and Competencies. Issues in Growth and Development. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Read More