Children's long-term retention of salient personal experiences.

Research on young children's long-term retention is reviewed in this article. More specifically, the abilities of 3- to 7-year-olds to remember the details of two types of medical experiences--a routine physical examination and an invasive radiological procedure--are discussed in the context of a framework for considering the flow of information in the developing memory system. The framework emphasizes four general themes about memory performance and provides a vehicle for relating research on memory development to discussions of children's testimony and adults' abilities to remember early experiences.