Forgotten baby syndrome

Forgotten baby syndrome refers to a phenomenon in which young children are mistakenly left in vehicles.

Analysis

Over 25% of parents with children under 3 have lost awareness of the child being present in the car at any point during the drive.^[1]: 77 Each year, around the world, dozens of children die of vehicle-related hyperthermia.^[a][3] Because these numbers began to rise after the popularization of air bags^[9]: 7 and rear-facing child safety seats,^[1]: 76 researchers began to suspect that memory may be the culprit.^[10]

According to David M. Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida who has been studying the phenomenon since 2004, the phenomenon is a consequence of tension between the brain's habit-memory and prospective-memory systems,^[11] which is resolved when basal ganglia "habit memory" suppresses the "prospective memory" system of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex,^{[1]: 78, 83 [12][13]} resulting in a false memory and what he calls "autopilot".^[12][13][14] Other psychologists have suggested the phenomenon is functionally similar to forgetting keys in a car^[15] or forgetting to post a letter.^[16]

Diamond has identified common factors of the phenomenon as "stress, sleep deprivation, and change in routine".^[13] Stephen Cowen, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona, has said that stress can render a person "more attentive to the immediate sensory stimuli or threats in your environment but not as attentive to your more distant memory of leaving your children in the car".^[17]

Prevention efforts

There have been several efforts to address the phenomenon through technology, including back-seat alert systems (which note when a backseat is opened prior to driving), car-seat alarms (which detect whether a child is buckled in),

• Heat stroke

Notes

References