Why people forget children in hot cars: complex brain memory systems sometimes fail, new study finds
- Prospective memory failure inhibits people doing things robotically or out of habit, says psychology professor David Diamond
- Many factors, including stress, interruptions, multitasking and sleep deprivation, can cause it
It’s a news story that conjures horror and disbelief: a child left behind in a hot car, sometimes with fatal consequences. How could any parent, any carer, commit such a grievous oversight? How could someone forget a child? The answer is in the complex ways that the human brain works, according to a new study.
And its author – psychology professor David Diamond, who has studied the phenomenon for more than a decade and testified in court as an expert witness – is calling for manufacturer safeguards to avert other tragedies.
“The brain memory systems that fail when people forget children in cars are the same as those systems that cause us to forget to shut off the headlights when we arrive at a destination,” said Diamond, a University of South Florida professor whose study was published recently in the journal Medicine, Science and the Law.
“Just as auto manufacturers have built-in systems that shut off headlights, we must have built-in systems that detect a forgotten child in a car.”
The problem centres on the failure of prospective memory – the process by which the brain remembers to do something in the future, according to Diamond’s study. A benign example of failed prospective memory would be forgetting to stop at a store to buy a dinner ingredient on the way home from work.