How do babies learn?

[Jellybaby75]

So everywhere I’ve read says that babies have only short term memory until they’re 3 years old.

If that’s so, then how do babies learn things without repeatedly doing something.

Anyone got any interesting sources/articles to read on this subject?

No studies to suggest I'm afraid but I assume it's because when they say 'short term' memory, it's meant that it won't be remembered into later childhood/adulthood as opposed to forgetting what happened a week/month/year ago?

My experience has been that my nearing-4yo DD1 could remember an awful lot last summer about the summer before (so just-3 remembering stuff from being just-2). Not vague details either, she could go into a lot of detail about seemingly random (to us!) things or stuff we'd promised her. Now at 3.9yo, she rembers much less of being just-2 but still a little of the more memorable trips etc.

So they very much use their memory and experience, but use it to build new ones, forgetting the originals along the way once it ceases to be useful as superseded or ingrained.