Introduction

Abstract

Research on children’s understanding of emotion is rooted in cognitive-developmental theory. One of the most direct influences has been work on so-called metacognition and metamemory: the study of children’s understanding of cognitive and memory processes. A key finding in this latter domain was that many memory processes operate in a relatively automatic fashion. For example, children’s long-term memory for faces, or their ability to learn and remember the meaning of several new words each day proceeds automatically. However, suppose instead that the child sees an adult point to three items from a larger set of common objects displayed on a table, and is then asked to remember that sub-set for a brief interval. To remember which objects the adult has pointed to, it would help the child to “rehearse” — to sub-vocally repeat the names of the three objects during the interval. Developmental research demonstrated that most younger children around the age of 5 years do not bother to rehearse whereas most older children around the age 10 years do so spontaneously, and thereby improve their performance (Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966). Subsequent research revealed that although younger children can be prompted to engage in rehearsal, and also benefit from it, they do not subsequently make use of it in a stable, autonomous fashion (Keeney, Cannizzo, & Flavell, 1967).