Cognitive Development, 7, 381-401 (1992) Constructing Event Representations: Building On a Foundation of Variation and Enabling Relations Patricia J. Bauer University of Minnesota Robyn Fivush Emory University Similarities in the patterns of recall of events by l- to Z-year-olds and 3- to 8-year- olds suggest continuity in the organization of event representations across an impressively wide developmental span. However, two abilities of older children have heretofore not been assessed in children under 3: the ability to recall long, temporally complex events, and the ability to generalize knowledge of an event over different instantiations. In the present study, 30-month-olds’ ability to re- member long event sequences, and their ability to incorporate novel props into their recall, was tested. Children enacted the same four event sequences in each of sessions. Each of the sequences was a complex mixture of enabling and arbitrary temporal relations. Additionally, at each session, some of the props used to en- act some of the sequences were changed. The children accurately remembered substantial portions of the events after only a single experience; they had better recall for the enabling-relation portions of the events. By the third testing session they showed clear evidence of generalization: They spontaneously incorporated the novel props into their recall. The results suggest that like older children, children under 3 rapidly form generalized representations of temporally complex events. Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by a University of Minnesota McKnight- Land Grant Assistant Professorship. and a National Institute of Child Health and Human Develop- ment First Independent Research Support and Transition (FIRST) Award (HD28425) lo Patricia J. Bauer, and by a Spencer Foundation Research Grant to Robyn Fivush. Support for data collection was provided by an Emory University Faculty Grant, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on the Transition from Infancy IO Early Childhood, and by a National Science Foundation Grant (BNS-8919035) to Jean M. Mandler. We thank the children and parents who participated in this study, Lillian Lathrop and Angie Schinkel for serving as the coders, and Karen Sheriff for serving as the experimenter. Portions of these data were presented as “The Generalities and Specifics of Z/2-Year-Olds’ Memories of Complex Events,” a poster presented at the biennial Inremational Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal. April, 1990. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent lo Patricia J. Bauer, Institute of Child Development. 5 I East River Road, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0345. Manuscript received November 15, 1991; revision accepted February 24, 1992 381