Children remember early childhood: long‐term recall across the offset of childhood amnesia

Young children's verbal recall for personally experienced events was examined over extended time periods across the traditional boundary of childhood amnesia. Forty children, aged 5½, discussed with an experimenter personal experiences that had taken place when they were as young as 1½. At 5½ children had not yet forgotten at least some events from before age 3½, the average offset of childhood amnesia. There was a qualitative shift in children's recall for events that occurred before age 2; for events that happened before age 2, only around half of children's recall was accurate. For events that occurred after this age, over 75% of children's recall was accurate. Complete forgetting of very early childhood has not yet occurred by age 5½.