| Working memory provides a temporary store for the maintenance and manipulation of information and is crucial to functioning in and learning about the world. From keeping track of the upcoming red light while changing the radio station in the car to remembering a recited phone number, working memory allows us to keep a limited amount of information in a heightened state of activation for further processing. Without it, we would be unable to consider things not in our immediate perception.;Investigating working memory from a developmental perspective permits us to examine the fundamental structure of memory and the kinds of computations that can be performed over remembered information. Studying memory using a developmental approach can help identify which aspects might arise early and remain stable throughout the lifespan, and which aspects might change in response to experience or maturation. Historically, a major goal of cognitive development research has been to characterize infants' memory for and reasoning about objects. Critically, in order to succeed at tasks such as tracking different numbers of hidden objects, or predicting whether a hidden object will causally interact with another, infants must rely on memory representations. However, in addition to solid objects, infants encounter many non-object entities, such as piles of blocks or flocks of birds. Yet far less work has investigated infants' memory representations of such non-object entities. In this dissertation, I aim to broaden the investigation of memory by examining infants' working memory for two types of non-object entities: chunks and ensembles.;Part 1 of the dissertation will focus on chunks---hierarchically structured representations that enable observers to increase the total amount of remembered information (Experiments 1.1--1.4).;Part 2 will focus upon ensembles, or summary representations of larger numbers of items (Experiments 2.1--2.5).;I will explore the role of features in establishing representations of chunks and ensembles. Taken together, these experiments go beyond the current infant working memory literature, which has traditionally focused on object representations, to provide an understanding of infants' mental representations of a broader range of entities. Simultaneously, I hope to draw stronger connections between adult and infant working memory. |
