Visual-verbal paired-associate learning (PAL) is thought to be related to reading acquisition and, more specifically, to word reading skills. To date, the uniqueness and strength of this relationship has remained unclear because most studies have been conducted in opaque orthographies such as English, and few studies have controlled for all of the…

Two experiments were conducted to assess the effects of elaborated presentation on noun-pair retention. A 2 x 2 factorial design was used with aural-verbal presentation (standard versus elaborated) and visual-pictorial presentation (standard versus elaborated). Subjects for one experiment were 64 second-grade children from a Mexican-American…