Time to Remember
How to Help Your Infant and Toddler Develop a Good Memory
By William H Staso, Ph.D.

The field of psychology has learned a great deal about how human memory works. Using this knowledge on behalf of infants and toddlers would seem highly useful, as it is during infancy that the brain establishes the way in which it will organize and associate information.

In general, adults who have good memory systems employ one or more of the following strategies: They develop an internal motivation, a real desire to know and remember; they pay close attention when they are attending; they attempt to actively understand the information; they relate it to what they already know; they repeat or rehearse or in other ways review the information from time to time; and they establish a reminder system as a cue to remembrance.

Interestingly, infants and toddlers naturally display the first two of these characteristics: They have a predisposition to learn (that is, they have internal motivation) and they can concentrate fully. Accumulating evidence suggests that the brains of infants and toddlers are much more like sponges than adult brains, developing associations and remembering sights, sounds, tastes and smells more quickly and more profoundly. If you have a child under three, it is very likely that at some point you have been amazed at how quickly he/she learned something. Although infants and toddlers are very distractible, when they do pay attention to something, their focus is very concentrated. They will even become entranced by certain images.

As a parent or caretaker, you need to help your child with the remaining strategies that enable the memory process. First, make it easier for your child to make sense of what is going on. Even though your baby can focus intently, there is a great deal to notice about objects and events. As his/her guide, you need repeatedly to provide demonstrations of how things work and other cause-effect events and sometimes very slowly in the course of the first two years. Infants and toddlers don’t take in all aspects of what they are looking at, hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting on any given occasion. Thus, they need repeat presentations and experiences. Young children will learn easier, more rapidly and more assuredly if they are assisted to grasp the patterns in arrangements and sequences. Develop routines that are predictable and are representative of a wide range of common, typical events.

Making sense of information also can mean finding ways to act on or use that information. Thus, multi-sensory involvements can aid memory skills. For instance, seeing a peach from afar will leave less of an impression that being able to smell, touch, bite and roll it. In this way memory associations are developed around the same object. If you have an oldertoddler, calling attention to elements of an event is helpful. For instance, in a restaurant you might point out the aromas in the air, the sounds of utensils being used and the arrangement of people at tables. In this way you guide their focus to associations that have a central theme. Researchers Hayne, McDonald and Barr (1997), who have studied differences in memory acquisition among infants, explain that “one hallmark of memory development is an increase in the range of stimuli that can serve as effective retrieval cues for a particular memory.” You want to help your child build that “range.”
And reminders help as well. In several experiments in this decade, infants have been shown to retrieve forgotten memories by reminders as short as three minutes per week (see Hayne, Hildreth and Rovee-Collier, 1998). If you have used multi-sensory experiences, then any of several sensory reminders, such as a sound or even a smell might strengthen an association or help create another association, and thereby serve to expand your child’s memory base.

In a general sense, you help to strengthen you child’s memory system by exposing him/her to predictable real-life events, by facilitating multi-sensory involvements, by giving repetitive demonstrations (at varying speeds) and by offering reminders and cues on occasion. As you assist your child to develop an associative network of understandings, you are also helping to ensure his memory will be first-class.