Emotional Memory Task Below is a description of the task that was used in the study. Stimuli presentation was done with the program Presentation. Due to the large number of stimuli, the task can be requested directly from the corresponding author. During emotional memory encoding, children saw emotional (e.g., a monster) and neutral (e.g., a cup) items presented on neutral background scenes (based on Waring and Kensinger, 2009). The 125 items (from Kensinger and Schacter, 2007) fell into 5 categories of each 25 items (15 target, 10 lures) differing in valence and arousal: (1) negative valence and high arousal, (2) negative valence and low arousal, (3) neutral (medium arousal, neutral in valence), (4) positive valence and low arousal, and (5) positive valence and high arousal. Emotional valence and arousal of each item was based on pre-study ratings of 45 6-to-7-year-old children, of which 21 (11 girls) rated valence and 24 (12 girls) rated arousal levels on a 9-point scale using the Self-Assessment Manikin scales (Bradley & Lang, 1994). Emotional categories were created separately for boys and girls to counteract gender differences in item categorization (e.g., a butterfly was positive and highly arousing only to boys). 32.8% of the items were in identical categories for each gender. The items were individually placed on neutral backgrounds (e.g., landscapes, indoor rooms without people), such that they were easily visible and did not change the emotional loading of the item. The pairing of items to backgrounds was counterbalanced in five task versions for each gender, such that across children each scene was paired with items of all emotional categories. At encoding, children saw a fixation cross for 1 sec, followed by the item-background pairing for 3 sec, after which they were asked to indicate by button press whether they would approach or avoid the item within 4 sec. Item order across emotional categories was randomized. At recognition on the following day, children saw 250 items and backgrounds displayed separately in randomized order, of which 75 items and 75 backgrounds had previously been seen and 50 items and 50 backgrounds were new. Items were counterbalanced to be both targets (old items) and lures (new items) across the 5 task versions for each gender. Children were instructed to indicate whether the item was new or old verbally to ensure task compliance, thus no reaction times were available.