A research study was conducted to determine if incorporating different types of pictorial illustrations into a slide-tape instructional program would improve achievement scores and affect processing time of bilingual students when they were tested on different types of learning objectives. Fifty-four undergraduate bilingual students from a Puerto Rican university, who had a high degree of proficiency in the use of English but were native speakers of Spanish, were matched according to English proficiency scores and randomly assigned to one of six treatment conditions receiving externally paced audio-slide, English instruction complemented by one of three levels of pictorial elaboration (simple line drawings, simple line drawings with word labels, or word labels alone). Forty-eight hours later subjects received a self-paced, 80-item evaluation test measuring four different areas of cognitive knowledge (drawing, identification, terminology, and comprehension); subjects also recorded the amount of time spent interacting with each task test. Achievement scores indicated a significant pictorial elaboration test task interaction. Conclusions were also drawn about the processing time data. (Author/LLS)