The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of organizational processes for both verbal and spatial stimulus materials within an information processing framework. Children in grades 2 and 4 and adults were tested for their ability to report letter strings reflecting various orders of approximation to English and various dot patterns reflecting different types of symmetry. Patterns were presented tachistoscopically at four exposure durations (50, 100, 150 and 200 msec), followed by a patterned mask. Results indicated that subjects in all three age groups showed greater ability to extract information from the iconic store if materials were structured. Moreover, subjects increased in the ability to extract information from verbal materials as they grew older. No age-related change in extraction efficiency was noted for the spatial materials when age-related differences in absolute short-term memory capacity were controlled. (Author/ED)