In for the short haul: Immediate and short-term remembering and forgetting by 20-month-old children

Using elicited imitation of multi-step sequences we compared immediate and short-term delayed recall in 20-month-old children. In Experiment 1, levels of recall after a delay of 10 minutes did not differ from those immediately after exposure. in Experiment 2, levels of immediate and 12 minute delayed recall did not differ and were greater than those after 48 hours. In Experiment 3, levels of immediate and 12-minute delayed recall did not differ. Neither did performance differ as a function of whether the 12 minute delay was filled with potentially distracting or interfering material or whether it was essentially unfilled. Patterns of correlation between tasks are consistent with the suggestion that recall after delays of 10-12 minutes and 48 hours are mediated by long-term memory representations, whereas immediate recall is mediated by short-term memory representations. The findings inform both the parameters and the processes of remembering and forgetting in children approaching two years of age.