Adult women and men differ in the affective qualities of their autobiographical reports. In the present study, we tested whether gender differences in emotional content are apparent in memories of both the remote past and the recent past, as well as whether they extend to internal states other than emotion. A total of 48 women and 30 men provided written accounts of four events from early in life (events from before age 7) and four events from later in life (events from age 7 or later). The narratives were coded for mention of emotions, cognitions, perceptions, and physiological states. Women used more emotion terms in their descriptions of events from later in life, relative to men; across life phases, similar trends were observed for cognition and perception terms, but not for physiological states terms. The category of internal states terms was found to be more coherent for women than for men. Results are consistent with suggestions that females and males experience differential socialisation regarding expression of internal states.

Long-term memory undergoes pronounced development in the latter part of the 1st year. This research combines electrophysiological (event-related potential [ERP]) and behavioral (deferred imitation) measures of encoding and recall, respectively, in an examination of age-related changes in and relations between encoding and recall during this time. In a short-term longitudinal study, infants were exposed to different multistep sequences at 9 and at 10 months. In both phases, they were tested for immediate recognition of the events via ERPs (as an index of encoding), and for recall of them 1 month later. At both ages, infants encoded the events; encoding was more robust at 10 months than at 9 months. After the 1-month delay, infants failed to recall the events experienced at 9 months, but evidenced recall of the events experienced at 10 months. In spite of developmental differences in encoding and recall over this period, indexes of encoding at 9 months were correlated with measures of recall of events experienced at 10 months and tested 1 month later.

Detection of novelty is an important cognitive ability early in development, when infants must learn a great deal about their world. Work with adults has identified networks of brain areas involved in novelty detection; this study investigated electrophysiological correlates of detection of novelty and recognition of familiarity in 9‐month‐old infants, using event‐related potentials (ERPs). Infants were familiarized with an event in the laboratory, then ERPs were recorded as they viewed repeated presentations of pictures of this familiar event and a novel event, along with single presentations of 30 trial‐unique events. A middle‐latency negative component was sensitive to degree of novelty, differing in amplitude and latency by stimulus condition and across repeated presentations. Long‐latency slow‐wave activity also related to stimulus condition. Findings have implications for our understanding of infants' detection of novel information and the processes that render the novel familiar.

Although 9-month-old