Gremlins in Childhood Amnesia Research

Bauer (2023) has provided a timely reminder that psychological research findings must be able to be generalized beyond the samples, stimuli, and paradigms used. In this commentary, I illustrate how research in childhood amnesia falls short. Using Bauer's terminology, there are serious gremlins in this research area. Although we often use nonrepresentative samples and a broad-brush approach which does not account for variation within participant groups, progress is being made. But there are serious issues in terms of methodology. The task that has been widely used is to ask individuals to describe their (single) earliest memory. But simple variations in how people are asked for their earliest memory often lead to much earlier memories. Furthermore, researchers have almost always taken participants' identified age at the time of their first memory at face value. But these age estimates seem to be vulnerable to consistent errors. As a consequence, the long-standing belief of when earliest memories begin may be wrong, and memories may be much earlier than prior research suggests.