Sonya is trying to remember events from her life as an 18-month-old. However, as hard as she might try, she has no conscious memory for anything that occurred before her third birthday. This is likely due to the fact that her hippocampus, which is involved in storing explicit memories, was not fully developed at that age. This inability to remember events when she was 3 years old and younger is called _____.

This inability to remember events when she was 3 years old and younger is called childhood amnesia. Childhood amnesia is what makes it almost impossible to remember events before 3 or 4 years of age. It is believed that at that age there’s lack of neurological maturation and therefore the brain cannot store memories and recall them afterwards. Apart from that, before the age of 4, language is not fully developed and this can also have some connection to the fact that children cannot have verbal recollection of events. No matter how hard Sonya tries to remember events from her life before she was an 18-month child, she won’t be able to do so.