Center Calendar

Recoding and Offloading: Efficient Working Memory in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Dr. Melissa Kibbe

Tuesday, November 29, 2016, 01:00pm - 02:00pm

Boston University, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Copy to My Calendar (iCal) Download as iCal file

Working memory is severely limited, but human adults make efficient use of this limited store by compressing to-be-remembered information into more manageable and easier-to-recall units. In this talk, I will show that efficient encoding in working memory begins in the first years of life. I will present evidence that, without instruction, infants and toddlers employ a wide range of strategies to recode to-be-remembered information and to offload the task of remembering information to external sources. However, I will also show that there are some surprising limits to this ability. I will conclude by discussing how these abilities and limits can provide insights into the early structure of working memory.

Dr. Melissa Kibbe