Turning memory development inside out

These papers provide a useful progress report on how the mature and successful field of memory development is transcending traditional boundaries of populations, content, context, and design. Examining children s memory for distant as well as recent occurrences, for social interactions as well as individual experiences, for meaningful as well as arbitrary information, and for emotion-laden as well as neutral experiences is creating a broader and more vigorous field. Even greater progress can be made by measuring at a fine grain level the processing activities that experiences elicit, how such immediate processing activities shape later memory, and how changes in processing with age and experience produce memory development. 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. This special issue is a progress report on a mature field, one with a long tradition of excellent research. In large part because of that strong tradition, the area of memory development has been more stable in recent years than many other areas of developmental psychology. This phenomenon is apparent in textbook coverage, including that in my own book, ‘‘Children s Thinking.’’ Over the two decades from the earliest edition (Siegler, 1986) to the most recent (Siegler & Alibali, 2004), most of the basic organizing constructs regarding memory development have remained the 0273-2297/$ see front matter 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2004.08.007 q Note: Preparation of this chapter was supported in part by Grant HD19011 from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development and Grant R305H020060 from the U.S. Department