If abstraction of information concerning the central tendency of a set of distortions occurs during learning, a time delay could lead to less forgetting of the schema than of the patterns which S memorized. 2 experiments, using 50 undergraduates, suggested that the schema pattern is less subject to loss over time than the learned instances. Results are consistent with the idea that information concerning the central tendency is abstracted during learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)