Abstract: This research explored the representation of sentences in memory through experiments upon the students respectively from three age stages, comparing their recognition of the Chinese sentences which are of the same proposition but of different sentence forms, and taking the rates and the responding time of their recognition as the measurement. Conclusions are as follows: Ⅰ. The propositional representation is a primary tendency different from the development of memory accuracy or from memory errors in essence. Actually, it is the result of acquired ability to distinguish the representation of sentence forms from the propositional representation. Ⅱ. It takes time to establish and consolidate the propositional representation which has a strong stability once it is established. On the contrary, the representation of sentence forms has less stability and inclines to fade away as time goes on.

Key words: sentence form, proposition, representation of sentence forms, propositional representation