[Development of long term memory in the child]

The relatively recent development of research on memory has considerably improved knowledge on the subject. The cognitive approach allowed to consider memory as a multiform phenomenon, implicating separate processes and based on independent systems. Memory presently appears as an active process, beginning to get organized as soon as the first interactions between child and environment. Recent research data show that infants memory seems to present specific characteristics, different from those of older subjects. This is a further argument to the theory of independent mnemonic systems, growing at different periods of development.