Visual short-term memory may not sound exciting, but without it even simple tasks such as eating and crawling would be difficult. Short-term memory is an “active” form of memory designed to help us process tasks, just like the RAM in your computer. Also like the RAM in your computer, the more memory you have, the easier these processing tasks are. Though even very young infants have some short-term memory, this ability develops rapidly throughout infancy dramatically altering the ways in which infants learn about the world. For example, when a baby looks from one parent to another, short-term memory allows that infant to key in on points of similarity and contrast. This type of visual comparison is crucial for difficult recognition tasks, such as learning mommy’s face!