| Child’s Age | Memory Capabilities |
|---|
| Under 2 years | Infants remember actions and routines that involve them. Memory is implicit, triggered by sights and sounds (an interactive toy, a caregiver’s voice). |
| 2-5 years | Words are now used to encode and retrieve memories. Explicit memory begins, although children do not yet use memory strategies. Children remember things by rote (their phone number, nursery rhymes). |
| 5-7 years | Children realize they need to remember some things, and they try to do so, usually via rehearsal (repeating an item again and again). This is not the most efficient strategy, but repetition can lead to automatization. |
| 7-9 years | Children can learn new strategies, including visual clues (remembering how a particular spelling word looks) and auditory hints (rhymes, letters), evidence of brain functions called the visual-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop. Children benefit from organizing things to be remembered. |
| 9-11 years | Memory becomes more adaptive and strategic as children become able to learn various memory techniques from teachers and other children. They can organize material themselves, developing their own memory aids. |
| Source: Based on Meadows, 2006. |