Memory can actually be divided into two basic types: declarative and non-declarative.

We now know that children's capacity for these different types of memory is determined by how mature their brain is.

Memory continues to develop as the brain matures. This development happens gradually over the first year or two before a big jump during the preschool years, when the development of language skills gives children an additional system for storing their memories.

At around age five they begin to use strategies-such as verbal repetition or writing things down-in order to preserve their memories. Children will continue to refine these strategies up through early adolescence, at which point their declarative memory ability is nearly as strong as an adult's. As with impulse control and future-planning, however, a teen will not be able to use highly sophisticated strategies until the prefrontal cortex (located just behind the forehead) has fully matured.