Reading a year later

In 2 experiments with 6 college students, 2 sets of measurements evaluated performance on a typographically inverted text that Ss had learned to read 13-15 mo earlier. In 1 set, speed of reading was compared for pages read for the 1st and 2nd times. Reread pages were read more quickly, thereby revealing an exceptional degree of memory at the pattern-analyzing level. In the 2nd set of measurements, Ss classified the pages as to occasion of reading. Comparing the 2 sets of measurements showed that different aspects of memory were measured by the different tests, and they were not well correlated. Results are accounted for in terms of encoding operations directed at the linguistic patterns, in contrast to the more familiar notion of manipulating semantic representations. (19 ref)