FORGETTING OF VERBATIM INFORMATION IN DISCOURSE

In three experiments, the causes of forgetting of verbatim information in discourse were investigated. In Experiment 1, we tested the view t hat the surface form of a sentence decays when linguistic elements are integrated into larger discourse structures. Contrary to such a view, the results showed that when text could be integrated, both content a nd verbatim memory improved. In Experiment 2, we examined the possibil ity that task instructions could influence the level of memory for exa ct wording and content. The results showed that although task did infl uence the amount of verbatim memory, it did not affect memory for cont ent. Experiment 3 was an investigation of the degree to which subjects would spontaneously encode surface information on the basis of the so cial interactiveness of the sentences. Past research has shown that ve rbatim memory for insults, jokes, and other personal utterances is qui te good. In this experiment, identical sentences were tested in texts that had high versus low interactiveness. Verbatim memory was much hig her for the same sentences in the highly interactive context. A pragma tic account of verbatim memory is given to explain how content and ins tructions influence the encoding of surface form.