The relation between comprehending and remembering some complex sentences

Abstract

This research concerns the distinction between processes in sentence comprehension and those in sentence memory. Comprehension was monitored by timing subjects while they decided whether a sentence was true or false of their knowledge of the world. The memory process was tapped by examining subjects' incidental memory for the sentences they had previously verified. The verification latencies indicated that at the time of comprehension, sentences like It is true that a fire isn't cold were often recoded into an equivalent affirmative form, namely, It is true that a fire is hot. However, negative sentences like It isn't true that a fire is cold were not recoded during comprehension. Recoding in recall occurred only for those types of sentences that were recoded at the time of comprehension. © 1976 Psychonomic Society, Inc.