The relationship between retention of story propositions and inferences was studied in two experiments on groups of children who averaged five and eight years in age. In the first experiment, the motives and theme of protagonists were varied and found to affect the number and kind of inferences made by eight-year-olds. The increase in the number of inferences, however, did not affect recall. In the second study on five-year-olds, probed recall was found to be superior to free recall. In both studies, the probability of an inference increased with recall of related propositions, but when the children were matched for retention, the older children made more inferences. Both major results suggest that retention precedes and may be independent of comprehension. (Author)