Two experiments, designed to examine the developmental changes in the modification of visual memory by verbal information, are described in this paper. In both experiments, first, third, and fifth grade children and college students were shown slides of short episodes followed by oral questions. Questions either described or did not describe events depicted in the slides. The first experiment indicated that correct recall of the visual events was facilitated by congruent verbal information and impaired by incongruent verbal information. The effects of verbal information were generally equivalent across age. The second experiment evaluated the effects of verbal information on visual recognition performance. Both the correct recognition of the original study slides and the false recognition of similar distractor slides increased when the questions presented information depicted in the appropriate slides. Again, the effects of oral information were generally unrelated to age. Since verbal and visual information was integrated by the subjects at all grade levels, this semantic integration was thought to occur spontaneously. However, when the subjects' recognition performance in the second experiment was made conditional on correct memory for the target slides, the integration of verbal and visual information increased with age. These results are consistent with the view that the utilization of constructive cognitive processes increases with age. (Author/MP)