A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: Early Memory Recall and Exposure to Photographs and Videos

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Childhood amnesia, the inability to fully remember events from the first years of life, is a universal phenomenon. However, several factors (e.g., culture, gender, family structure) can influence the age and phenomenology of earliest memories. The characteristics of childhood amnesia may shift with societal changes as well. Recent technological advances have made early life events easier to record and rewatch, often immediately after the events occur. Therefore, many of today’s young adults have been exposed to photographs and videos of their earliest experiences. Research suggests that photographs and videos have the ability to reinforce memory retention in young children. Furthermore, the visual memory system is present from birth, making visual stimuli particularly relevant for early memory retention. However, it remains unknown whether exposure to photographs and videos of early life events bolsters recall as an adult, thereby influencing the trajectory and/or phenomenology of childhood amnesia. Therefore, the present study explored the relationship between young adults’ recall of their earliest memory and exposure to photographs and videos of the memory event.

Young adults (N = 127; Mage = 20.71 years) were given five minutes to recall and list as many events as possible from the first five years of life. Afterwards, participants were asked to identify their first memory and indicate whether it was spontaneously included in their list. Finally, participants answered a series of questions about the phenomenology of the first memory event (e.g., importance of event, valence of event, clarity of event, etc.), their age at the time of the event, and whether they were exposed to photographs and/or videos of the event. We hypothesized that participants who were exposed to photographs and videos of their first memory event would be more likely to spontaneously recall the memory, report earlier first memories, recall the memory in more vivid detail and with more clarity, and report that the memory was less negative (given that positive events may be recorded more often) than participants with no exposure.

As evident in Table 1, exposure to photographs, but not videos, of the first memory event predicted spontaneous recall of the memory. The age of the first memory and level of memory clarity did not differ between those who were and were not exposed to photographs or videos of the first memory, ps > .05. However, the valence of the event did differ between groups. As seen in Table 2, those exposed to photographs and videos of their first memory reported first memories that were less negative than those not exposed.

The current results suggest that exposure to photographs of early events may help preserve and reinforce these memories and increase the likelihood that our first memory will be of a positive event. These findings suggest that technological advances shape our memory, with implications for the foundations of identity development. Future research should examine the extent to which photographs directly contribute to memory encoding or retention and whether photographs improve recall of early memories by facilitating family conversation about documented life events.

Authors

• Caroline Cha, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Emily Slonecker, Cabrini University
  Non-Presenting Author

• J. Zoe Klemfuss, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author