Event Details

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.