According to Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter, tragic cases of forgotten children started to rise near the turn of the millennium, just as new safety rules began requiring children to be placed in car seats in the back. “You would never think that that could produce a problem with forgetting because the child is no longer visible, but sadly it has,” said Schacter, author of “The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers.” His 2001 work, based on his research into memory errors, includes a discussion that helps explain how a parent could forget something as essential as taking his or her toddler with them when leaving their vehicle.

Read the full article in the Harvard Gazette.