Children of second and fifth grades and undergraduate students were asked to encode verbally each of 16 figures under two of the following three instructions: social-communicative, self-memorial, and associative. Two weeks later, they attemped to match their own codes and those of other subjects with the correct figures. In the second grade subjects no significant difference was found in communicability of codes under the three conditions. In the fifth grade subjects social-communicative codes were more communicative to others than self-memorial or associative ones. In the case of the undergraduates the order of communicability was social-communicative, self-memorial and associative. Differences in content and mode of encoding under the social-communicative, self-memorial and associative conditions were also analyzed.