Four separate experiments were completed using the same stimulus materials but different groups of subjects to determine if orienting tasks created problems of control in incidental/intentional learning studies. Subjects were all Caucasians and heterogeneous in age (from 24 to 64 years), educational experiences, and career choices. Those in the first two experiments were enrolled in a continuing education class at a university, those in the third all worked for the same company, and those in the fourth were graduate students. In each case subjects were given nine words, three high frequency, three medium frequency, and three low frequency, and told to write as many synonyms for each as they could in two minutes. In addition, the intentional subjects were told to try to memorize the stimulus words. Analysis of the number of synonyms generated to the stimulus words on the orienting task and the number of stimulus words recalled revealed that intentional learners recalled significantly more stimulus words than incidental learners in three of the four experiments and that there was no significant difference among incidental and intentional learners on the orienting task in any experiment. The rehearsal time necessary to encode stimulus words by the intentional learners did not disrupt performance on the initial learning task. (JL)