The dramatic cases of “forgotten” children in the car. What goes on in a parent’s mind?

He had to take his one-year-old daughter to kindergarten but the child remained in the car for 7 hours, “forgotten” for apparently incomprehensible reasons, to the point that afterwards, unfortunately, there was nothing more to be done. Yet another news story, which saw the protagonist of a carabiniere dad in service in Rome in the general division for military personnel of the Ministry of Defence, has generated profound dismay in everyone, not just in those who are parents.

In Italy it is theeleventh case of a child who died because he was forgotten in the cara figure overshadowed only by American figures, where abandonment syndrome in the car has a frequency five or six times greater than in our country and where the phenomenon has been carefully studied for some time. After all, no one can understand how one can “forget one’s child” and more and more experts are striving to investigate and explain the brain mechanisms that underlie these tragic cases.

Andrea Fiorentinipsychotherapist and president of the scientific committee of the Italian Scientific Society of Hypnosis in Psychotherapy and Humanistic Medicine, has a strong competence on the mechanisms concerning memory and hypnosis. We asked him for clarification on this phenomenon which deserves an understanding also (perhaps above all) from a scientific point of view.
“The causes of these sudden mental ‘blackouts’ can actually be very complex,” underlines Fiorentini. “In my opinion they are dependent on two main factorsthe first of which is linked to a cognitive component that has to do purely with our memory».

Explain to us better.
«During the day we use different types of memory: one linked to routine and our habits that makes us capable of automatically carrying out a series of even very simple and banal tasks. Another, much more particular and complex, is instead the prospective memory, and gives us the ability to remember to carry out a very particular action, previously programmed, which must be inserted at a precise moment in our day or following a particular event. An action, in practice, to be performed at the same time as our routine activities ».

So where does the “blackout” come from?
«It is precisely in the relationship between these two memory systems that the “short circuit” can occur. Because what I call, in an unscientific but easy to understand term, “habitual memory” tends to economize on information for a physiological question of survival of the human being and adaptation to the environment. Practically, a blackout can occur when we have excessive prospective memory stimulation that reminds us to perform many actions outside of our habitual memory».

Are there any “triggers” in this sense apart from excessive stimulation?
“In fact, prospective memory is a skill that should only be stimulated in certain moments of our lives and not excessively. Short circuiting can occur when we are overstimulated, when we are overly stressed and when in fact we have so many tasks that come out of our routine».

Could some people be more predisposed than others?
«Prospective memory is a memory that has a sort of inverted U distribution: during childhood it grows more and more, memory performance is excellent up to a stabilization phase during early adulthood, around 30-40 years of age. maximum. After that the curve starts to go down and memory starts to regress. Therefore, the predisposition is there in general for everyone, if we consider that starting from the age of 40 our cognitive abilities indistinctly tend to decrease».

What is the other contributing factor, in your opinion, of these blackouts?
«It is a more sociological, more social factor, linked to the fact that we live in a very particular historical period, which has led us to undergo substantial changes in the last 20-30 years, the same period of time in which we have also seen the growth this phenomenon of the syndrome of abandonment of the child in the car».

What kind of substantial changes?
«Today we are constantly hyper-connected, the challenge is being able to do many things at the same time: managing the family, productivity at work, problems related to Covid, those related to war, the economic crisis… There is pressure in the environment where we live that it affects memory a lot, however our brains are not designed to multitask. And although many claim to be able to do several things at the same time, this is actually a commonplace fruit of a naive psychology, because the reality is that our brain is made to do one thing at a time and do it well”.

We need to reconsider the “myth” of multitasking, so…
«Unfortunately, when we overload it, our brain goes into a sort of stand-by mode and does things automatically, precisely due to the need for conservation. The prospective memory can then undergo a short circuit which cancels some actions. If this mechanism is not clear, it is easy to point out people with little attention or carelessness. I believe, therefore, that it is a moral obligation, and not just a scientific one, to try to understand what happens in our brains».

Could there be a sort of “brain prevention” in this sense?
“I realize that today it may be a bit difficult, but if we want to decrease the chances of having these memory leaks we should actually lead a more serene life, less multitasking and focused only on a few things at a time”.