After third grade of elementary school, native Hebrew speakers in Israel gr
adually become expert in reading two kinds of writing systems: the one they
start with that contains signs for every phoneme of the spoken language, a
nd another, to which they are steadily introduced, beginning with the secon
d grade, which omits most vowels, together with few consonantal distinction
s. Earlier studies indicate that single voweled words are read faster than
unvoweled words, particularly in a naming task. This study examined another
possible contribution of vowel signs in reading Hebrew: Its effect on memo
ry and comprehension. It was assumed that if subvocalization facilitates me
mory of words while reading, and if vowel signs facilitate phonological pro
cessing, as is perhaps the case in naming tasks, then vowelization may inte
nsify the processing of the articulatory loop and this should improve memor
y and comprehension. Our first two experiments assessed the contribution of
vowel signs to the memory of word lists in either recognition memory or wo
rd recall tasks. The third experiment examined the contribution of vowel si
gns to the reading of connected texts. We found that vowel signs speeded up
recognition memory of words in third graders, and improved the recall of w
ords printed in the context of mixed lists in sixth graders. We also found
that vowelization improved memory and comprehension of some prose texts.