If you have a repressed childhood memory, you may find yourself feeling triggered or having strong emotional reactions to people who remind you of previous negative experiences, family therapist Jordan Johnson, LMFT, tells Bustle

you would use a process of recall to retrieve the right answer from your memory Recognition is easier than recall because it involves more cues: all those cues spread activation to related information in memory, raise the answer’s activation, and make you more likely to pick it

Thinking about something else can help “reset” your retrieval Relax Anxiety can make it difficult to remember even simple information If you are having a hard time remembering something, don’t get worked up over it; try taking a few deep breaths to calm yourself and then try to think of the information

Childhood or infantile amnesia, the loss of memories from the first several years of life, is normal, so if you don’t remember much from early childhood, you’re most likely in the majority

Trauma Research suggests people who have a history of trauma, depression, or stress may be more likely to produce false memories Negative events may produce more false memories than positive or neutral ones

Childhood amnesia

Trouble with total recall can come from many physical and mental conditions not related to aging, like dehydration, infections, and stress Other causes include medications, substance abuse, poor nutrition, depression, anxiety, and thyroid imbalance

Humans can be primed and implicitly trained earlier before they can remember facts or autobiographical events This is most important in terms of emotional trauma Adults can generally recall events from 3–4 years old, and have primarily experiential memories beginning around 47 years old

It is generally accepted that no-one can recall their birth Most people generally do not remember anything before the age of three, although some theorists (eg Usher and Neisser, 1993) argue that adults can remember important events – such as the birth of a sibling – when they occurred as early as the age of two

Substantial evidence for fetal memories has been found at around 30 weeks after conception This form of memory is important for a type of development known as attachment Fetal memory is thus critical to the survival of the fetus both prenatally (in the womb) and after birth as an infant

“The main reason is a process called confabulation For many people, they have been told things that they then go on to remember as them actually experiencing this Your parents telling you specific details about your birth – that might lead you to fill in the rest”

Most adults suffer from childhood amnesia, unable to remember infancy or toddlerhood That’s what scientists thought But a new study indicates that even six years after the fact, a small percentage of tots as young as 2 can recall a unique event

Akira Haraguchi

Some people on the spectrum can recall memories from further back Additionally, memory in people on the spectrum can closely resemble photographic or near photographic levels Though they may not recollect a name or face, some individuals on the spectrum could surprise you with the small details they can recall

Individuals with autism have both specific difficulties with memory and memory strengths Memory difficulty is not part of the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD); but, it is a common difficulty experienced by many individuals with this diagnosis

Genetics Several different genes appear to be involved in autism spectrum disorder For some children, autism spectrum disorder can be associated with a genetic disorder, such as Rett syndrome or fragile X syndrome For other children, genetic changes (mutations) may increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder