Abstract.A study was conducted to explore the developmental differences in utilizing a superordinate context during learning and at retention at two grade levels. Ss were 98 students from third and fifth grade classes divided approximately evenly by sex. A 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design was used: factor 1 was superordinate vs coordinate topic sentence at learning; factor 2 was presence or absence of a superordinate retrieval cue; factor 3 was grade level. Ss were tested on both recognition and recall. Contrary to previous findings, results showed that the condition most conducive to learning was superordinate sentence present at learning, absent at recall. Reasons for the disparity in findings with previous research are discussed. Ausubel (1963) has theorized that meaningful verbal learning will occur only when the ideas to be learned can be related to existing cognitive structure. One of Ausubel's recommendations for structuring learning materials is to follow a strategy of "progressive differentiation"; that is, to first present general, more abstract information and then to elaborate that information with more concrete, specific information. The notion is that the specific concrete material can be more meaningfully learned since it can be related to the more abstract material already learned.Such a principle makes the prediction that meaningful verbal instruction will be most efficient when it proceeds from the general to the specific, from the superordinate to the subordinate. Within the area of learning by reading, this would imply that paragraphs should be constructed by stating the superordinate ideas in the first sentence (the "topic" sentence) followed by the specific subordinate ideas. Just this hypothesis' has been tested by Gagne (1969) and Gagne and Weigand (1970) in two interesting experiments.