Remembering and representing prose: Quoted speech as a data source

Abstract

Experiments involving memory for prose have shown that subjects remember meaning better than form and that memory for prose is better in natural environments than in the laboratory. In even the most favorable circumstances, however, verbatim recall is faulty. Words that are not tightly integrated into the clause are remembered less well than those that are not, e.g., hedges and intensifiers, conjunctions, and modifiers. The data have implications for a language of thought.