Searching for target letters in memory: Individual preferences and instructions for text representation

Participants searched for target letters in a short passage held in memory. In Experiment 1, participants were divided into two groups on the basis of a retrospective report concerning the type of representation used to store the passage in memory, and in Experiment 2, participants were instructed concerning the form of memory representation to use. Only participants using a visual representation missed more targets in the wordthe than in other words. Participants instructed to form a visual representation also made fewer content-word or phrase substitutions when learning the passage than did participants instructed to form an auditory representation. These findings show that choice of memory representation is flexible and that the representation used influences what can be retrieved from memory.