ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how information is encoded and stored in an immature memory system and then turn to a consideration of whether such memories can exist intact over the ensuing decades into adulthood. It considers the following anonymized excerpt from a typical trial where an adult claimed to have remembered a traumatic early childhood event. The chapter discusses oftentimes memory evidence, particularly in cases of historic child sex abuse, routinely contain such terms. As development proceeds across the early school years, children's conceptual knowledge changes and memory for autobiographical experiences improves. Children become better at using conventional indices of time, include emotional terms reflecting their feelings about the experience, and become contextually grounded. The chapter argues that what the evidence shows is actually quite the opposite. In fact, there are many reasons to suspect that using strategies such as false denial and intentional forgetting might impair memory and increase false memory levels.
