Why the memory affected as one does grows old?

Research indicates that memory may start to develop even before you are born. As a child your capacity for memory becomes increasingly sophisticated and then as you progress in old age your memory may deteriorate. So let’s start at the beginning. Within a few days of birth most infants are able to recognize their mother's voice and face, and within a few weeks, their father's voice. The next big jump in memory ability occurs around nine months, when the child develops the ability to store and then recall memory, what scientists call ‘object permanence’. What this means in plain English is that if you put a blanket over the teddy bear, the infant will not be fooled, but remember the teddy bear is underneath. The plus side to object permanence is that it allows the baby to compare and connect new experiences to old ones. The down side, however, especially for parents, is that this ability also means the child remembers their parents when they are not in the room and starts to miss them. A child’s memory is still not fully developed at this stage. Another key development is learning to speak. Without language children’s memories remain entirely non-verbal, something which may explain why we cannot remember our earliest childhood experiences. As language develops 24 so too does a child’s short term and long term memory. Even when our memory is fully matured, we all know that it is not 100 % accurate. Even when we remember something clearly, it may not be as accurate as we think. This is because our memory has a habit of deleting, generalizing and distorting - it will fill in the gaps of half memories with what was probably true, it will take parts of separate memories and merge them into one new one and it will adapt memories to show us in the best light to name but a few. Most scientists believe that, as