![]() According to the Piagetian perspective, infants learn about the world primarily through their senses and motor abilities (Harris, 2005). Even as adults we continue to try and “make sense” of new situations by determining whether they fit into our old way of thinking (assimilation) or whether we need to modify our thoughts (accommodation). ![]() For example, recognizing that a horse is different from a zebra means the child has accommodated, and now the child has both a zebra schema and a horse schema. Instead of assimilating the information, the child may demonstrate accommodation, which is expanding the framework of knowledge to accommodate the new situation and thus learning a new word to more accurately name the animal. ![]() After the decrease of new nerve tissue, the baby mice were able to better retain the information in their long-term memory and could make their way through the maze.įrankland may get the chance to apply this theory with humans because he encounters many children in his work who take drugs with the side-effect of slowing down neurogenesis.When faced with something new, a child may demonstrate assimilation, which is fitting the new information into an existing schema, such as calling all animals with four legs “doggies” because he or she knows the word doggie. In the researchers' study, the baby mice navigated a maze and forgot how to get through it days later. Young mice have similar issues with their memory as human infants, which prevent them from retaining information. ![]() They suppressed the high levels of neurogenesis - the development of new nerve tissue - in young mice and stimulated increased neurogenesis in older mice.įrom that work, the researchers said they were able to show a relationship between a reduction in neurogenesis and increased memory, and on the other side of the coin, a decreased memory when neurogenesis is increased. Researchers applied their theory to young and old mice by looking at the portion of their brains where memories are stored. Sheena Josselyn from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, say that this shuffling of memories could have the positive effect of increasing the capacity for new learning. ![]() "Studies have shown that though young children can remember events in the short-term, these memories do not persist." Old memories traded for new "Adults have surprisingly few memories of early childhood despite the seemingly exuberant learning capacity of young children," says the report. The study looks at adults' lack of long-term memory of events occurring within the first two to three years of life, along with the little drips of long-term memories of events that occur until about seven years of age. The fishbowl memories of a toddler and the lack of memories adults have of infancy have been a longtime mystery in the scientific community, but the Canadian Association for Neuroscience believes it has found an answer.Ī study released Friday by the association suggests that "infantile amnesia" - a term coined by Sigmund Freud - is caused by the mass growth of nerve cells in an area of the brain called the hippocampus.Īccording to the study, the massive onslaught of new experiences in infancy causes a kind of circuit overload in the area of the brain responsible for storing new experiences in the long-term memory. ![]()
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