Shifts in the apparent charge stored on a floating gate (or other charge storing element) of a non-volatile memory cell can occur because of the coupling of an electric field based on the charge stored in neighboring floating gates (or other neighboring charge storing elements). The problem occurs most pronouncedly between sets of adjacent memory cells that have been programmed at different times. To compensate for this coupling, the read process for a given memory cell will take into account the programmed state of a neighbor memory cell if the neighbor memory cell was programmed subsequent to the given memory cell. Techniques for determining whether the neighbor memory cell was programmed before or after the given memory cell are disclosed.