The Development of Memory in Infants

Memory is not a single entity but a patchwork of several different forms of information storage that emerge progressively with the maturation of different brain circuits. Babies begin life with a primitive yet very useful set of memory skills; lower parts of the brain can store information, but it is at an automatic level, beneath consciousness, and lasts for relatively short periods of time. Then, starting at eight or nine months of age, they show signs of a more flexible, deliberate type of...