The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of visual and auditory presentational features on young children's selection and memory for verbally presented content. Assessed as a function of action and sound were preschool children's preferential selection and recall of words presented in a computer microworld. A computer microworld consists of scenarios providing options to move various objects on a static but vivid pictorial background. The objects, called "sprites," are programmed to have particular shapes, colors, movements, and sounds. In this study, 40 preschoolers, equally distributed by sex, were randomly assigned to one of four versions of a microworld. Within each version, 24 sprites were randomly assigned action and sound properties. The experimental design was counterbalanced so that in each version every sprite assumed all possible factorial combinations of action and sound. Children preferentially selected and recalled more words presented with action than words presented without action. Although children selected sounds, sounds interfered with children's recall of linguistic information. Results supported an action superiority hypothesis and an auditory interference hypothesis. These results suggest that action should be an integral component of educational computer software designed for young children. Cited are 25 references. (RH)