Final answer:
Infantile amnesia is likely influenced by the lack of brain development, especially in areas like the hippocampus, which is not fully mature in infancy. Additionally, the inability to make reliable use of language to classify or symbolize events contributes to difficulties in memory encoding and retrieval during early childhood.
Step-by-step explanation:
Infantile amnesia, the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories from the early years of life, typically before the age of 4 years, could have several physiological reasons. One proposed reason for infantile amnesia is the lack of brain development, particularly in areas involved in memory storage and retrieval.
The hippocampus, a region critical for transferring information from short-term to long-term memory, continues to develop after birth and its immaturity during infancy may contribute to the inability to form lasting memories during this period.
Moreover, language development plays a significant role as well; the ability to symbolize or classify events using language may not only aid memory encoding but also enables later retrieval of those memories.
Therefore, among the options, the physiological reason of infantile amnesia that relates to the inability to make reliable use of language to symbolize or classify events would be the inability to make reliable use of language.
This limitation during the early developmental stage may hinder the encoding and retention of memories that could later be articulated or conceptualized once language skills are acquired.