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The Development of Children's Memory

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DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12129

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 CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES
The Development of Children’s Memory
Wolfgang Schneider1 and Peter A. Ornstein2
1
urzburg, and 2University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of W€
ABSTRACT—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 impor-
tant new lines of inquiry: short- and long-term memory
development in infancy, the development of autobio-
graphical memory, and longitudinal research on memory
strategies and metamemory. We end by contrasting
research on memory development with that on the develop-
ment of memory, and identifying an emerging interest in
biological and social factors that affect developmental
change.
KEYWORDS—memory development; history
A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
Research on children’s memory can be traced to the early days
of psychology in the 19th century, and many themes explored
then are decidedly modern in character (1). For example, labora-
tory work on age differences in digit span (2) identified memory
capacity as a foundational construct, and studies of memory for
prose passages and lists of unrelated words by Binet and Henri
(e.g., 3) demonstrated the importance of knowledge and
Wolfgang Schneider, University of W€ urzburg; Peter A. Ornstein,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
We wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable
feedback.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Wolfgang Schneider, Department of Psychology, University of
W€urzburg, Wittelsbacherplatz 1, D-97074 W€ urzburg, Germany;
e-mail: Schneider@psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de; or Peter A.
Ornstein, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270; e-mail: pao@unc.edu.
© 2015 The Authors
Child Development Perspectives © 2015 The Society for Research in Child Development
DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12129
Volume 9, Number 3, 2015, Pages 190–195
constructive activities long before these topics became main-
stream in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, research on sug-
gestibility (4, 5) and autosuggestibility (4) was inspired by
applied questions concerning children’s abilities to provide evi-
dence in legal settings and anticipated many core research
themes on eyewitness testimony (6). Moreover, parallel to their
research on testimony, in the early 20th century, Stern and Stern
(7) explored young children’s ability to report personally impor-
tant events, and at about the same time, Freud (8) identified the
phenomenon of childhood amnesia, that is, adults’ inability to
recall events that occurred before ages 3 or 4. Finally, in
Hunter’s study (9) of his young daughter’s performance on a
delayed reaction task, her active search for a hidden object var-
ied as a function of the length of the delay, anticipating modern
studies of working memory (e.g., 10).
Although these early studies were important, research on the
development of children’s memory did not catch on in the early
years of the 20th century, despite interest in the applied ques-
tion of possible links between memory span and intelligence (1,
11). However, interest in studying children’s memory returned
by the middle 1960s, when Flavell launched a series of studies
on memory that focused on strategies for encoding information,
such as rehearsal (e.g., 12). Flavell positioned this work in the
context of neobehaviorist studies of verbal symbols as mediators
in complex learning situations. Thus, even though he was inter-
ested in age-related differences in children’s cognition, Flavell
et al. felt compelled to discuss deliberate strategy use in terms
of the more passive mediational framework.
From this perspective, it had become clear that even though
young children might have the appropriate words as mediators
(quite literally between stimuli and responses), their use did not
always facilitate performance. In fact, Flavell’s research began
with a focus on distinguishing between mediational deficiencies
(i.e., failures of generated mediators to work in the sense of facil-
itating remembering) and production deficiencies (i.e., failures
to produce the mediators). These pioneering studies dramatically
influenced the next generation of researchers, who used a cogni-
tive framework to focus on age-related changes in children’s
information-processing skills (e.g., 13, 14). Aided by the

widespread interest in cognition, research on the development of
memory grew rapidly, and by 1971, enough research had been
done for Flavell to organize a symposium entitled “What is
memory development the development of?” at the biennial
meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. This
foundational question stimulated new research that changed the
focus of theoretical analyses of children’s memory, shifting the
emphasis to the interplay between the development of cognitive
resources, in general, and the functions of memory, in
particular.
The new perspective on cognitive development proved genera-
tive and led to a melding of Piagetian and information-process-
ing points of view in the influential research of neo-Piagetian
researchers such as Case (e.g., 15) and Pascual-Leone (16).
This, in turn, yielded insights into the nature of memory capac-
ity and its development. These theoretical perspectives on mem-
ory capacity, as well as new models developed by Baddeley and
Hitch (17) and Cowan (18), attracted attention and stimulated
empirical research on the importance of working memory for
other domains and for understanding the constraints on chil-
dren’s memory performance and development. Related research
demonstrated further that the capacity of an individual’s working
memory limits the higher-order cognitive operations one can
perform (19), including those called for in academic domains
such as arithmetic and in carrying out deliberate strategies for
remembering.
Given the resulting interest in children’s memory, a detailed
picture of the development of deliberate memory skills emerged
over the next 15 years. Strategies for encoding information—
such as organization, rehearsal, and elaboration—were observed
to play considerable roles in children’s memory performance,
with age-related changes in the complexity of these strategies
contributing to changes in performance with age (e.g., 20). How-
ever, researchers also recognized that children’s mnemonic
skills can be influenced dramatically by context variables (e.g.,
task demands, effort requirements, motivation; 21), by what they
know about the materials being remembered (22, 23), and by
their metamemory, or their understanding of the operation of
memory, and the task and situational conditions that affect suc-
cessful remembering (24, 25).
Researchers also understood that automatic factors may
sometimes influence the use of strategies. For example, highly
organized or salient sets of stimulus materials may elicit
advanced rehearsal and organizational strategies—via interitem
word associations—at a time in development when they might
not otherwise be observed (26). Furthermore, with practice and
experience in executing particular strategies—along with the
development of underlying information-handling capabilities
such as processing speed (27)—procedures that were once
difficult to perform may later be executed with relative
ease because they become automatized and thus demand less
effort (21).
Child Development Perspectives, Volume 9, Number 3, 2015, Pages 190–195
The Development of Children’s Memory 191
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FIELD
The first 20 years of research on children’s memory and its
development focused mostly on documenting age-related pro-
gression in children’s verbally based memory skills. The empha-
sis was on deliberate memory, that is, on what children of
different ages could remember and what they did when con-
fronted with deliberate memory demands. Research participants
were primarily school-age children and the studies were almost
completely cross-sectional. All of this changed in the next
20 years.
During this time, several new lines of research emerged, more
or less in parallel. We outline three because of their strong links
with the historical approaches described earlier. First, research
with infants revealed surprising mnemonic skills that had been
overlooked. Second, studies of children’s autobiographical mem-
ory revealed early-developing skills in using language to report
previous experiences. Third, longitudinal studies of remember-
ing enabled the study of changes in individuals’ skills over time,
and provided an effective way of integrating several themes.
Memory Development in Infancy
Although Hunter’s classic study (9) on his young daughter’s
working memory did not receive much attention in the early
days, research on infant memory gained momentum with the
invention of new technologies in the early 1980s. Early work
with a visual paired comparison task provided evidence that
infants can retain briefly experienced visual information for up
to 2 weeks, working on the assumption that memory is indexed
by longer looking at a pre-exposed (and hence now-familiar)
stimulus than at a novel one (e.g., 28). However, because the
resulting measures of infants’ performance reflect a combination
of both short- and long-term memory processes—a distinction
introduced by William James (29) that became one of the
themes of the information-processing perspective—researchers
had to develop methods for generating uncontaminated measures
of these forms of memory. (Because the constructs of short-term
and working memory cannot be easily distinguished in young
children [10, 30], we will not differentiate them).
Recently, researchers (31) have obtained uncontaminated
estimates of infants’ short-term memory by adapting a change-
detection paradigm used with adults. With this technique,
infants are presented simultaneously with two visual displays
that blink on and off repeatedly, one of which changes continu-
ously (e.g., three squares presented in different locations) while
the other does not change (e.g., three squares presented in the
same locations). Assuming that infants would look longer at the
changing display if they could form a memory representation of
the information displayed and keep it active in the brief delay
between presentations, 4- and 6½-month-olds remembered only
1 or 2 items, whereas 10- and 13-month-olds remembered 3 or
4 items. Thus, infants’ initial short term/working memory is lim-
192 Wolfgang Schneider and Peter A. Ornstein
ited but changes significantly in the first year of life. The perfor-
mance of the older infants is impressive, given that adults’
capacity for the objects used in these experiments is also limited
to three or four items.
Moving beyond the assessment of short-term/working memory,
studies using conditioning and imitation-based paradigms have
informed our understanding of infants’ long-term memory. A
conjugate reinforcement task (e.g., 32) used an operant condi-
tioning method to study learning and retention in 2- to 6-
month-olds. In this work, a ribbon connected an infant’s foot to
an attractive mobile that was placed overhead so with each
kick, children saw the mobile move. Remembering was inferred
if the rate of kicking when the ribbon was disconnected from
the mobile was greater than that in a baseline period. In the
elicited imitation-based tasks (33), an infant witnessed the mod-
eling of simple sets of actions (e.g., making a gong), and mem-
ory was inferred if he or she could later act out the modeled
sequences.
Although the researchers who developed these tasks differ in
their interpretation of the underlying memory systems that are
tapped by the conjugate reinforcement and imitation paradigms,
taken together, research with these techniques demonstrates
long-term memory in young infants, illustrating that they can
retrieve information after extended periods. In many studies
using variants of the conjugate reinforcement procedure, reten-
tion increases linearly between 2 and 18 months. The imitation-
based procedures also reveal long-term memory in very young
children and indicate strides in recall across the first year of
infancy and beyond. Whereas the temporal extent of memory
seems limited in the first 6 months of life, 6-month-olds can
remember simple events after 24 hr, and 9- to 12-month-olds
recall multistep sequences after 4–6 weeks.
Although additional research is needed to understand how
these indicators converge to characterize children’s skill at any
one point in development, a high-functioning memory system is
in place before language is available for encoding and reporting
information. Of course, children’s abilities change once they can
use language, as is seen in studies of autobiographical memory.
Development of Autobiographical Memory
As already indicated by the Sterns’ early case studies (7), chil-
dren’s autobiographical memory is reflected in their accounts of
specific, distinctive events that they have experienced. In this
section, we first discuss children’s memory for salient target
events and then consider event memories expressed in conversa-
tions between parents and children, as well as the implications
of this work for understanding eyewitness testimony.
In some studies of autobiographical memory, preschoolers and
children in the early elementary grades were exposed to spe-
cially crafted stimulus events, such as visiting a pretend zoo
(34), whereas in others, the focus was on naturally occurring
medical experiences (e.g., 35). Many studies of children’s auto-
biographical memory indicate that with increases in age, chil-
Child Development Perspectives, Volume 9, Number 3, 2015, Pages 190–195
dren had more overall recall, reported more information in
response to open-ended questions, and thus depended less on
yes/no questions to elicit memory (e.g., 36). Moreover, older
children forgot less over time (e.g., 37) and were less susceptible
to suggestive questions (38).
Young children’s autobiographical memory is also reflected in
their conversations with parents and other adults about events
they have experienced. In this regard, children begin to talk
about past activities almost as soon as they produce their first
words, and their skills for recalling past experiences in
parent–child conversations develop rapidly between ages 2 and
4. Nevertheless, when children first begin to reminisce, the adult
partner provides most of the content and structure, with the
child assuming more responsibility for the conversation as he or
she grows older. Indeed, with age and increased experience
talking about the past, children’s reports become more detailed
and complex, and depend less on information provided by adult
conversational partners (e.g., 39).
One salient feature of the now-extensive literature on remi-
niscing is that of variability across parents in how they structure
these conversations. Put simply, researchers have identified two
broad reminiscing styles: high elaborative engagement and low
elaborative engagement (39). In contrast with parents who use a
low elaborative style, those who use a high elaborative style ask
many questions, follow in on their children’s efforts to contribute
to the conversation, and continue to add new information even
when children do not. These reminiscing styles generalize across
different types of discussions about past events (e.g., excursions
and holidays, outings to the zoo or a museum) and are consistent
over several years with the same children. Children exposed to
highly elaborative conversation remember more than children
who experience low elaborative conversation. These differences
in maternal reminiscing are associated with later differences in
children’s abilities to recall personally experienced events.
To some extent, research on children’s autobiographical mem-
ory was prompted by concerns about their abilities to provide
evidence in legal situations (38), and findings such as those
reported here have enhanced our understanding of children’s
testimony. Overall, several early findings (e.g., 5) have been
confirmed (e.g., age differences in recall and the negative effects
of misleading questions and repeated questioning), but early
assumptions that young children are generally unreliable wit-
nesses have not been supported. Admittedly, young children’s
eyewitness testimony can be less accurate than that of older
children and adults, but when young children are questioned
with appropriate interview protocols about events they under-
stand, they can provide accurate reports. Guidelines for inter-
viewing children in the legal system have emerged from this
research (e.g., 40).
The Impact of Recent Longitudinal Memory Research
Most of the foundational work on memory development was
based on cross-sectional studies that documented the skills of

children of different ages but provided little insight into devel-
opmental change in individual children. Longitudinal research
designs are necessary to track such change, and several studies
(e.g., the Munich Longitudinal Study of the Ontogenesis of Indi-
vidual Competencies) were launched in the mid-1980s that
lasted a decade or more, included many participants, and
tapped several features of memory and cognition.
One contribution of this longitudinal work is the understand-
ing that several factors contribute to the growth of working mem-
ory, including a type of domain-general cognitive primitive
mechanism (41). More specifically, factors such as brain growth,
increases in knowledge, strategy use, and processing speed, as
well as changes in the rate of memory trace decay, contribute to
developmental changes in working memory (42).
A second contribution relates to our greater understanding of
developmental changes in children’s strategic competence. In
cross-sectional studies, strategy use appears to improve continu-
ously with age, but longitudinal studies indicate that these tech-
niques do not develop in such a straightforward way. Instead,
individual children’s use of memory strategies may actually
increase abruptly at different points, and the ages at which
mnemonic techniques are acquired are apparently relative and
variable across different strategies. For example, even pre-
school- and kindergarten-age children use intentional strategies,
both in ecologically valid settings such as hide-and-seek tasks
and in assessments in the laboratory (43). The longitudinal stud-
ies also demonstrate that acquiring strategies involves more than
replacing an ineffective technique with a more effective proce-
dure. Indeed, simple and inefficient strategies reside alongside
more sophisticated and efficient ones, and strategies do not
always help performance, although most children use strategies
competently by the end of elementary school (see also 44, 45).
A third contribution of longitudinal work has been to clarify
the developmental links between metamemory and later use of
strategies. Most researchers have assumed that children would
not use strategies for remembering until they have adequate
levels of metamnemonic understanding. However, testing this
assumption requires information about strategies and metame-
mory from the same child over time to determine whether
knowledge of the use of strategies leads to their later use. In
fact, longitudinal studies support the link between earlier
metamemory and later use of strategies (46). Longitudinal
work also shows that links among strategy usage, metamemory,
and recall strengthen with age, and that knowledge of a strat-
egy is connected more strongly to use of a strategy than to
recall performance, primarily because strategy use directed by
metamemory is only one of several determinants of perfor-
mance (30).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this article, we provided a historical perspective for the study
of children’s memory and demonstrated that the field has
Child Development Perspectives, Volume 9, Number 3, 2015, Pages 190–195
The Development of Children’s Memory 193
remained vibrant and relevant for both basic understanding and
application. We also showed how the 1971 symposium, “What
is memory development the development of?” set the stage for
40 years of productive research (47). Of course, the answers to
Flavell’s question have changed over the years and include
strategies, metacognition, capacity, and autobiographical reports.
As a result, researchers have learned much about memory
development, in the sense of characterizing the skills of children
of different ages. However, what has been missing is a focus on
the development of memory, that is, on understanding the endog-
enous and exogenous factors that affect developmental changes
in the skills that have been well-documented. Nonetheless,
researchers have begun to address this critical issue, and we
can see tentative answers emerging from research in develop-
mental cognitive neuroscience (e.g., 48) and studies of the
socialization of children’s memory (e.g., 49). Both of these areas
demonstrate how one can study both the development of memory
and memory development.
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