Emerging literacy is a developmental process which is closely tied to the child's developing cognitive processes. The interaction of memory and emerging literacy can be discussed in the context of Marie Clay's Reading Recovery model. Memory types, encoding and retrieval, strategy use, and executive control/expectancies are components of cognitive processing that broadens educators' conceptualization of early literacy acquisition by looking at emerging literacy from a different perspective. Three types of memory have been identified: recognition, reconstruction, and recall. From short term memory to long term memory, the most critical of transformations occurs--encoding. Strategies (the third area of memory) are conscious activities that a learner uses to facilitate memory. In the information-processing model, executive control directs the learner's attention, decides on how information is encoded and retrieved, and how information is expressed in organized responses. Understanding memory's role in early literacy acquisition deepens the researchers' and teachers' knowledge of factors that may impact how children learn to read. This knowledge can expand the understanding of how to support each child's literacy development as she journeys from recognition memory to recall memory, develops metamemory, and replaces less efficient strategies with more efficient strategies. (Contains 27 references.) (RS)