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, (2)_____ children younger than three or four (3)_____ retain any specific, personal experiences. A variety of explanations have been (4)_____ by psychologists for this 'childhood amnesia'. One argues that the hippo-campus, the region of the brain which is (5)_____ for forming memories, does not mature until about the age of two. But the most popular theory (6)_____ that, since adults don't think like children, they cannot (7)_____ childhood memories. Adults think in words, and their life memories are like stories or (8)_____ one event follows (9)_____ as in a novel or film. But when they search through their mental (10)_____ for early childhood memories to add to this verbal life story. they don't find any that fit the (11)_____ 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 (12)_____ for childhood amnesia. She argues that there simply aren't any early childhood memories to (13)_____. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use someone else's spoken description of their personal (14)_____ in order to turn their own short-term, quickly forgotten (15)_____ of them into long-term memories. In other (16)_____, children have to talk about their experiences and hear others talk about (17)_____—Mother talking about the afternoon (18)_____ looking for seashells at the beach or Dad asking them about their day at Ocean Park. Without this (19)_____ reinforcement, says Dr. Simms, children cannot form. (20)_____ memories of their personal experiences. Notes: childhood amnesia 儿童失忆症