Childhood Memories: Documentary Analysis

In this documentary we get insight into how our memories work. Our memories develop with us and contain our experiences, secrets, and dreams. Our memory is our cells responding to our environment and taking record of how we perceive things. In this documentary, researchers conducted a self-recognition test on toddlers to see if they recognized themselves in a mirror with paint on their noses .Very few of the children passed, so researchers conducted a second experiment with the same group of toddlers to test their memory by letting the children put a stuffed lion to bed in a filing cabinet. When the children were brought back two weeks later, the few who experienced self-recognition were able to remember where they placed the stuffed lion.

Our memories are so complex. The fact that our memories make up who we are and without them we would be lost is a scary thought. In the self-recognition test they did on the toddlers I found it very interesting that most of the toddlers thought there was something on the mirror and not their selves. Our sense of self and memory develops throughout childhood, so this test was giving us insight into which toddlers in this particular group already developed their memory. I think that it is astounding that people found such a simple way to do so. In the experiment that Harvard University conducted on remembering vs. imagining, I was shocked that the results between past and future events were so similar. People always say “we should invent a time machine” when actually our memories serve as a mental time machine that is always available. We can take pieces of our memories and put them together to imagine our future. Our memories make us the most unique in the animal system simply because we have the ability to plan and have abstract thought. Our memories help us to survive by using our problem solving skills. Our memories out do any computer, we can remember 200 bits of information per second. People nowadays rely on computers, phones, and calculators when in fact the best tool to use is inside of us. Although we tend to remember things that are of high importance to us, we all at some point have experienced something we would rather forget. However, we learn from our experiences so erasing those memories would not be in our best interest. As we get older we lose our white matter and chemical messengers yet our memories from the past are retained. I work in a nursing home so I see this very often. My residents cannot remember things that happened to them recently so they reflect on old memories by telling stories about their pasts. The question I have is, does everyone lose their memory? I know at