Development of memory in infancy and early childhood

This review paper gives an overview about the ontogeny of implicit and explicit memory in infancy and toddlerhood. Most memory researchers in developmental psychology come to the conclusion that while implicit memory performance is already found in infants in the first weeks or even the first days of life, evidence for explicit memory can only be found in the second half of the first year. In addition, there is a lot of (theoretical) consideration that explicit memory in babies and toddlers reflects general knowledge, which means that early explicit memory performances are based on semantic memory. Episodic memory as defined by Tulving (2001), which means the remembering of own, past experiences (mental time travel), is based on several precursors (e.g., development of self, multiple models of representation). Due to these preconditions episodic memory is only found at the end of the second year of toddlers.