Early Childhood: Memory

Memory Development

Increases from infancy and toddlerhood, becomes more detailed, able to recall and work with information.
3 Types of memory: Short-term, working memory, long-term
STM Memory Span:
- Children ages 2-3 Can recall back 2 digits, to about 5 digits by age 7
- There are individual differences in memory

The average 5-year-old can hold one or two pieces of information in his mind at a time.
- E.g. “put your book in your cubby, and come sit at the table”
Memory span & WM increases with age due to rehearsal, automaticity
- Less resources being used, things become more automatic
To help younger children with memory and automaticity- learn things through song, movement/multisensory

Young children create autobiographical, episodic memories
Two-year-old children form autobiographical memories and remember them over periods of at least several months
Ages 3-5, increasingly remember specific location and time, details, can retain memories long term

Kids’ memories are more coherent when there’s a context of who, what, where, when, why, and how
Memories that are tied with emotion and fit into a greater context are more likely to form earlier and last longer.
- You can help this process by talking to kids about experiences from their lives.
Peterson conducted a study of parental influence on early memories. In the experiment, young adults (ages 18-28) were asked to recall as many memories involving parents as they could from their preschool years (before age 6).
Peterson found that when individuals had warm parents that spent time talking about the past, they remembered more of early life, AND had memories from further back in their lives
- This was held particularly true for father’s and sons, based on the study results.