When does a baby develop memory?
It is believed that children can even remember what they felt and heard in the womb .
And this is true, although the child’s memory in the uterine period differs from our usual understanding - it is mainly unconscious and is based on remembering sensations and sounds. And this is not surprising, because adults 90% of visual sources of information to build a picture of the world, and the child perceives the environment through the mother’s reactions at the chemical level.
Functionally, the child’s memory begins to form after the 30th week of development in the womb. During this period, neuronal cells rush to the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is directly responsible for storing information and forming long-term memories.
Therefore, even in the womb, the child remembers the voices of his parents and begins to react, for example, when he hears his mother speak.
Prenatal memory
It is difficult to talk about the memory of a newborn because he cannot tell us about intrauterine life. However, studies have shown that human memory begins to form even before birth, for example, the baby recognizes the music that sounds during development in the mother’s tummy, remembers the smell and rhythm of her heart.
However, after birth the memory is short-lived - only 1-2 minutes, so the baby is unlikely to remember the doctor or his actions. The first thing a child will see and remember for a long time will be his mother’s face, and only because he sees his mother almost constantly.
Associations associated with the parent’s appearance are also remembered - feeding, safety, hugs and other pleasant feelings. The newborn’s brain gradually remembers the action-consequence connection, for example, that when he cries, his mother appears and calms him down, so a sense of security and attachment to his parents is formed.
Development of a child's memory in the womb
Is it possible to develop a child's memory in the womb? The very process of memory development in a baby largely consists of what the mother eats, what she listens to, what environment she is in and how she feels.
An amazing discovery was made by Italian scientists who noticed that the fetus, like an adult, periodically brings its hands to its face, and the movements slow down when approaching. Moreover, after birth, such skills in the child disappear and develop again later. This may be due to the baby's orientation in a limited space.
Fatty acids during pregnancy
It was noticed that if women added red fatty fish to their diet during pregnancy, then in the future they would perform better on intelligence tests and have good natural memory. This is due to the high content of Omega-3 unsaturated fats in red fish.
At the same time, it is important to approach fish consumption with caution and not to eat large and adult fish, since heavy metals such as mercury accumulate in fish over time. Therefore, young and small fish are safer in this case.
Bad habits for a baby
At the 20th week of a baby’s development, cells that perform protective and nutritional functions are actively formed in his brain, so at this moment the baby’s brain increases significantly in size.
This process of myelination, that is, the growth of neurons with protective cells, can be negatively affected by the bad habits of the mother and father. Cells of this type are quite sensitive to hypoxia, that is, lack of oxygen, so smoking or inhaling smoke in the environment can lead to mental retardation.
Smoking cigarettes by the mother can lead to the fact that the child in the womb does not gain sufficient weight, frequent vasospasm occurs, which in turn can lead to ischemic stroke. Moreover, children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy often develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
All this is due to the fact that from the 18th week synapses begin to actively form, which are sensitive to all negative factors.
The development of a baby's memory in the womb consists mainly of maintaining a favorable and harmless environment for normal development.
Child's sound memory
At the 24th week, the baby’s ears begin to form, so it becomes possible to perceive and remember auditory information from the surrounding world. Researchers' experiments show that a child in the womb can distinguish from memory the intonation and timbre of his mother's voice from the voice of another woman. On the same basis, the sounds and music that the baby hears during this period are memorized, which can naturally affect later life.
Surely you have heard about the influence of classical music on the fetus and how beneficial it is for the development of the baby’s future intellectual abilities. But this is not always true, since in this case the more important factor is the synchronicity of the sensations between the baby and the mother.
If mothers forcefully listen to compositions by famous classics every day, then in addition to the auditory component, a negative emotional perception will also be transmitted to the child. And this is unlikely to help instill in the baby a good musical taste.
Therefore, music as such cannot be harmful or beneficial for a child, it all depends on how the child reacts to it and how the mother feels about it. An important point when listening is the volume of the music; it should be moderate and should not harm the child.
Development of memory in schoolchildren
When a child enters first grade, he immediately finds himself in an unfamiliar environment. From the first days of school, he has to memorize large amounts of information. As the student gets older, the workload will increase. If he does not have good memory and attention, then studying will be more and more difficult for him every year. That is why it is necessary to pay special attention to the development of memory in a child over 7 years old.
It is important to teach him to remain focused on lessons and to voluntarily remember the information that he receives from the teacher’s lectures and textbook texts. To do this, you need to regularly perform various exercises that are aimed at improving the skills of perception and assimilation of new knowledge. No less useful for memory development will be reading and discussing books, memorizing poems, writing summaries - that is, those tasks that the school curriculum already includes.
Sometimes such simple training is enough to improve memory and attention. But if it is still not easy for a child to cope with the academic load and remember large amounts of material, then he needs additional training.
How does a baby's brain work?
Cognitive, that is, cognitive, abilities and learning abilities arise in the baby even in the uterine period, and exactly how they manifest and develop depends, among other things, on genetic predisposition.
Every child develops differently, and it is believed that hereditary abilities account for 20% of full potential. This means that it is extremely important to develop a child, regardless of the genetic component.
Can babies think?
The thinking of an adult is based on logic; all reasoning processes are subject to the four laws of logic: identity, non-contradiction, exception and reason. The child does not make conscious conclusions and does not reflect on what is happening around him, since for the most part he simply perceives the world as a whole without dividing information into fragments.
The child's thought process, both in the womb and thereafter, consists of a syncretic perception of reality. In other words, everything they perceive is inextricably linked with various emotions, so the child sees and feels the world much brighter and more interesting than adults. This is where more stable long-term memory for many events and emotions comes from.
The ability of nerve cells and endings in childhood manifests itself to the maximum, so a child is able to remember, for example, foreign languages better and more effectively than many people in adulthood. The memory and learning ability of children is much better than that of an adult, due to the factor of novelty of information, because for children in the world almost everything is new, mysterious and unknown, which generates and is accompanied by emotions.
Positive emotions are an important key to the learning process; the more a child likes what he does, the more effective his mental development and memory strengthening will be, so learning under pressure rarely leads to positive results.
Child's memory in the first year
In the first year of life, the child begins to master the world around him through his visual organs. Despite the fact that in the first months a child has rather weak vision, unlike adults, he begins to follow and observe what is happening around him. A more or less good level of vision in babies is formed by the 3rd month and gradually improves, which allows them to examine surrounding people and objects in more detail.
Despite poor eyesight, an auditory and visual image of the mother has already been formed in the child’s memory. This is confirmed by special experiments, during which the mother was in front of the child, but spoke in a voice unusual for her, modified by technical means, and then a stranger was in front of him, but speaking in the voice of the mother. In all these cases, the child gave a negative reaction to the person.
Since Soviet times, scientists have coined the term “revitalization complex”—the child’s response to the mother’s smile and active movements of the legs and arms. As it turned out later when studying such a reaction, the revival complex is a kind of signal from the baby about the desire and unwillingness to start communicating with an adult.
Memory of children under one year old - learning by imitation
Imitation is the basis for studying the world and society up to three years. The baby drives a car, talks on the phone, puts dolls to sleep just like parents do.
All this is proof of excellent observation and the ability to remember images and situations, thus, the baby expands his vocabulary, physical skills (running, jumping) and activities (building with blocks, drawing).
Already at the age of three, he will tell you what happened in kindergarten and remember his birthday two months earlier.
Some events that a child forgets accumulate in the subconscious, forming personality and character. So, the baby may not remember that at the age of seven months he was bitten by a cat, but the imprint of this incident will remain with him for a long time and perhaps he will avoid communicating with furry animals in the future.
Child development stages by week
Prenatal period
The child in the womb perceives and remembers information from the outside world thanks to the mother’s hearing and sensations due to certain hormones. Despite the fact that it is believed that the baby learns to move consciously at 3-4 months, he actively performs organized actions.
Week 12
From the 12th week, the baby begins to hear and develops the ability to distinguish sounds from the environment.
1st week of life
The newborn gets used to the daily routine, recognizes the sounds and smells that precede feeding: the clinking of dishes, the sound of a bottle warmer, the smell of warm milk.
2 weeks
At two weeks after birth, the child already remembers and clearly perceives in an inseparable image the voice and appearance of the mother.
1 month
The baby begins to remember the voices of all family members that it hears. During this period, the child’s vision is quite weak, but he actively observes the world around him with eye movements.
1.5 months
The child begins to remember the emotions that parents convey through facial expressions. At the same time, he understands in what situations certain grimaces are used.
2 months
From the second month, the child begins to distinguish simple contrasting colors, so he begins to pay attention to bright colored toys and follow them with his eyes. At this age, the memory of cause-and-effect algorithms, which is more familiar to adults, begins to manifest itself. He is able to isolate people present from surrounding objects.
3 months
In the third month, the child develops the ability to distinguish the shapes of objects. The time for storing the image in memory increases and becomes more than 1 second.
4 months
The ability to fix new images in memory for more than one second continues to develop. During this period, the child begins to recognize the visual image of the mother at any time of the day and distinguish the faces of familiar people from unfamiliar ones.
6 months
The child begins to realize the differences between objects in their sizes and when playing with the disappearance of a toy, he understands perfectly well that it still exists, it is simply not visible.
8 months
At this age, the negative reaction to unfamiliar people’s faces intensifies, this is especially pronounced if the child is left alone with a stranger.
The so-called “Fear of Separation” begins to form - if the mother goes into another room and is gone for a long time, the child begins to worry and makes this clear with a loud cry. From this age to 12 months, the baby manifests and develops the ability to recognize various objects, toys or things not only as a whole, but also in their individual parts, this means that the child begins to develop long-term memory.
9 months
By this period, the child begins to show signs of thinking through sensory-motor intelligence. The baby begins to realize that the words he hears are not just certain sounds, but also have meaning.
1 year
Long-term memory continues to form. When communicating with mom or dad, the child strives not only for emotional contact, but also for joint action, involving parents in something, for example, pointing with a finger at what needs to be looked at together.
