The Development of Children's Memory

The development of memory has been studied for more than a century and is one of the most active areas of research in cognitive development. In this article, we first describe historical developments in research on children's memory, focusing on systematic studies that began in the late 1960s. We then describe three important new lines of inquiry: short- and long-term memory development in infancy, the development of autobiographical memory, and longitudinal research on memory strategies and metamemory. We end by contrasting research on memory development with that on the development of memory, and identifying an emerging interest in biological and social factors that affect developmental change.