ABSTRACT
The aim of this book is to give an integrative introduction to theory and research on memory development during childhood and adolescence. For more than a century, scholars have investigated what children can remember and how they do it, with the result being a large, well-organized database about children's memory. Even so, this is a database that is often ignored. For example, the last decade witnessed many cases in which children's memories were critical in criminal trials. In particular, children's memories often were given great weight in deciding the fates of accused child molesters. Although children's memory data were accepted uncritically in the middle 1980s, by the mid-1990s the courts were much more discerning. This was due in part to a great deal of research on the development of autobiographical memory (i.e., memory of events in one's life), which was inspired by the legal community's need to know about children's memory abilities, and also by an increasing understanding of children's memory in general based on a century of data. Moreover, the accumulated understandings of the last century did much to inform those carrying out the studies of autobiographical memory.
