A valuable resource for anyone interested in the development of memory. This text discusses the development of long-term memory, including autobiographical memory, and argues that memory is an adaptive mechanism for the development and survival of humans and non-human animals.

Autobiographical memory is constituted from the integration of several memory skills, as well as the ability to narrate. This all helps in understanding our relation to self, family contexts, culture, brain development, and traumatic experiences. The present volume discusses contemporary approaches to childhood memories and examines cutting-edge research on the development of autobiographical memory. The chapters in this book written by a group of leading authors, each make a unique contribution by describing a specific developmental domain. In providing a multinational and multicultural perspective on autobiographical memory development—and by covering a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, this state-of-the-book is essential reading on the autobiographical memory system for memory researchers and graduate students. It is also of interest to scholars and students working more broadly in the fields of cognitive, developmental, and social psychology, and to academics who are conducting interdisciplinary research on neuroscience, family relationships, narrative methods, culture, and oral history.

Does infantile amnesia exist? Can children accurately recall traumatic events? Do memory's organizing, storage, and retrieval mechanisms change during childhood development? Through a thorough examination of recent scientific evidence, The Fate of Early Memories divorces fact from fiction regarding the nature, durability, and fallibility of memory.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

The Development of Memory in Infancy and Childhood provides a thorough update and expansion of the previous edition and offers new research on significant themes and ideas that have emerged in the past decade such as the cognitive neuroscience of memory development, autobiographical memory and infantile amnesia, and the cognitive and social factors that underlie memory for events. In this volume, Courage and Cowan bring together leading international experts to review the current state of the science of memory development in their own research areas. They note questions of theory and basic science addressed in their research, highlight the real-world applications of those findings, and propose an agenda for future research. The book also considers the implications of their work for the development of atypical children, specifically, how these new findings might be adapted to enrich the lives of those children and to inform and validate our current expectations of individual differences in the development of typical children. The first of three groups of chapters focuses on basic neurobiological, perceptual, and cognitive processes that underlie memory and its development (i.e., encoding, consolidation and storage, retrieval). The second group focuses primarily on the social, contextual, and cultural factors that enable, shape, and mediate these basic processes, while the rest of the chapters focus on practical applications of this knowledge to real-world settings and issues. The book provides a new look at memory development, including new topics such as spatial representation and spatial working, prospective memory, false memories, and memory and culture. This classic yet contemporary volume will appeal to senior undergraduate and graduate students of developmental and cognitive psychology, as well as to developmental psychologists who want a compendium of key topics in memory development.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.