Substance Recall of Sentences

Abstract

Seventy-three high school girls who received either imagery or repetition instructions attempted to recall a once-exposed series of 16 sentences shortly after exposure or one day later. Both the absolute and relative frequency with which semantically-related words were substituted for the verbatim language of the sentences increased over the retention interval. This fact was explained in terms of transfer from a phonological store to a semantic store. Sentences were almost always recalled as a whole if they were recalled at all, which was interpreted as evidence that sentences are learned and recalled as propositions rather than sets of independent associations among words or concepts.