The effects of experience with a series of similar cases on the knowledge restructuring and learning from text were studied in a longitudinal design. Two groups of fourth-year medical students were confronted with a series of cases, part of them having the same underlying disease. The cases were interspersed with fillers, and each set of cases had one filler from the other set. Students were asked to diagnose the cases and to try to learn as much as possible, and they were asked to learn as much as possible from a text. Case processing time showed that students who had worked in a series of similar cases needed less time for the same case than students who did not have that experience. Results show that one series of cases, those dealing with polycystic ovaries syndrome, was more intensively processed than the other series, and that those students showed more traces of knowledge construction, although it was not clear why. Prior processing of a series of cases led to better text recall of the part of the text that concerned these specific diseases, but did not affect reading time. Results do suggest that students learned case content from processing multiple cases, and that they integrated it into their prior knowledge. It is hypothesized that the theory on construction and integration of W. Kintsch explains these outcomes. (Contains 1 table, 4 figures, and 10 references.) (SLD)