Verbal Memory Development from Early Childhood to Early Adulthood

Although scientic research on memory development shares the same long tradition as the scientic study of psychology (i.e., about 130 years), the majority of studies have been conducted within the past 4 decades, stimulated by a shift away from behaviorist theories toward information-processing theories (Schneider & Pressley, 1997). Among these are thousands of empirical studies that have investigated the development of children’s and adolescents’ ability to store and retrieve information from memory (for reviews, see Cowan, in press; Kail, 1990; Schneider & Bjorklund, 1998, 2003; Schneider & Pressley, 1997).