Her research has explored the phenomenon of childhood amnesia and how social, cognitive, and neural changes relate to the development of autobiographical memory.

Upon graduation, Bauer completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, where she conducted studies of categorization in infants and young children in collaboration with Jean Mandler.

Here, she put together a small team of intelligent and ambitious graduate and undergraduate students, motivated to chase further research on the origins of long-term memory and its theoretical shift from infancy to early childhood.

[11] This study demonstrated the importance of causal connections and temporal structure in supporting children's earliest event memories.

Other notable work on the development of memory is Bauer and colleagues' SRCD monograph on Parameters of Remembering and Forgetting in the Transition from Infancy to Early Childhood.