The ability of 20 deaf and 20 hearing high school students to recall propositions and inferences from prose was examined and compared. Ss were asked to read and then write a given story. Hearing Ss recalled significantly larger numbers of propositions than deaf students, but both deaf and hearing Ss recalled similar numbers of story inferences in their written narratives. The interaction between the deaf Ss' reading comprehension levels and their narratives revealed that better readers were more accurate in recalling explicit premise information, but were not different in recalling implicit content. Results suggested that written instructions, texts, and narratives should be viewed as communication acts requiring integrated communicative performance for implicit intentions, as well as explicit facts. (Author/CL)