What's your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you heard thunder or watched a television program? Adults seldom【1】events much earlier than the year or so before entering school, just as children younger than three or four rarely retain any specific, personal experiences. A variety of explanations have been【2】by psychologists for this 'childhood amnesia' (儿童失忆症). One argues that the hippocampus, the region of the brain which is responsible for forming memories, does not mature【3】about the age of two. But the most popular theory maintains that, since adults do not think like children, they cannot【4】childhood memories. Adults think in words, and their life memories are like stories or narratives--one event follows another as in a novel or film. But when they search through their mental【5】for early childhood memories to add to this verbal life story, they can't find any that fits the pattern. It's like trying to find a Chinese word in an English dictionary. Now psychologist Annette Simms of the New York State University offers a new【6】for childhood amnesia. She argues that there simply aren't any early childhood memories to recall. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use someone else's spoken description of their personal experiences in order to turn their own short-term, quickly【7】impressions of them into long-term memories. In other【8】, children have to talk about their experiences and hear others talk about them--Mother talking about the afternoon【9】for seashells at the beach or Dad asking them about their day at Ocean park. Without this verbal reinforcement, says Dr. Simms, children cannot form【10】memories of their personal experiences. (11)