Childhood amnesia has been attributed to the inaccessibility of early memories
as children grow older. We propose that systematic biases in the age estimates
of memories may play a role. A group of 4- to 9-year-old children were followed
for 8 years, recalling and dating their earliest childhood memories at three
time points. Although children retained many of the memories over time, their
age estimates of these memories shifted forward in time, to later ages. The
magnitude of postdating was especially sizable for earlier memories and younger
children such that some memories were dated more than a year later than
originally. As a result, the boundary of childhood amnesia increased with age.
These findings shed light on childhood amnesia and the fate of early memories.
They further suggest that generally accepted estimates for people�s age of
earliest memory may be wrong, which has far-reaching implications.