ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of short-term maintenance. It considers short-term memory as the storage function of a working memory system in charge of all types of processing in the short term. The maintenance of information in the short term is characterized by an important age-related increase. This increase is observed in infancy as well as throughout childhood. Short-term maintenance processes are distinct from executive functions, and among the processes in charge of maintenance, at least two main domains are dissociable, the verbal and the visuospatial domains. The maintenance of verbal information has received considerable attention in the study of short-term memory. However, visuospatial maintenance has become the object of greater interest. The renewal of research on visuospatial storage stems from the interest in the change detection task and use to measure short-term memory capacity. Research has aimed at documenting age-related changes in the capacity of short-term storage and at understanding the mechanisms responsible for such changes.
