Development of Long-Term Retention

For a number of decades now the study of children's memory development, with few exceptions, has been synonymous with the development of pro­ cesses that lead to the initial encoding and immediate retention of informa­ tion. Although there is little doubt that the study of such acquisition pro­ cesses is central to understanding memory development, the long-term retention of previously encoded information represents at least as important a component of children's memory. Indeed, as both stude