A recognition paradigm was employed to assess developmental changes in memory for within-sentence (premise) and between-sentence (inference) information from 16 brief prose stories. Eleventh graders retained significant amounts of both premise and inference information, while fifth graders showed substantial retention only for premise information. The discrepancies between these and previous findings are explicated with regard to instructional conditions, story construction, and test list design. It is concluded that fifth graders are less inclined to retain between-sentence information from prose materials than are eleventh graders. (Author)