ABSTRACT
There was a time when the study of infant and young children's memory was the purview of a small group of us who were doing basic research on the mnemonic processes that were developing over the first few years of life. This chapter focuses on some animal research because it may provide interesting new evidence that the human memory system is highly responsive to contextual factors. A perusal of the depositions and in-court testimony of some memory development experts reveals the difficulty they seem to have in generalizing from the basic research corpus on memory development to a particular case. The research on infantile amnesia suggests that the memory difficulties of both human and animal infants are strongly influenced by contextual factors, both intrinsic and extrinsic. The chapter concludes by suggesting various factors that may be involved in infantile amnesia.
