A study was conducted to determine whether children think about the verbal messages embedded in songs, or merely sing the words without thinking about them. A total of 48 preschool girls and boys viewed a televised vignette of the song "Frere Jacques" under varying conditions of language comprehensibility, rehearsal, and repetition. The visual track always depicted a sleeping friar who was awakened by ringing bells, while the audiotrack presented the accompanying song in either French or English. The song was played two times during each exposure. In active rehearsal conditions, children were asked to sing during the second presentation. In passive rehearsal conditions, children were asked to listen to the song one more time. The repetition condition involved repeated exposure to the vignette for 4 successive days, while the no repetition condition involved exposure for 1 day only. Children who repeatedly viewed the French vignette recalled more words verbatim than did children in other conditions. Older children better understood the sequence of visual story events and the meaning of song lyrics than younger children. The results suggested that songs lead to children's relatively superficial information processing activities without any major impact on learning. Given this implication, an educational challenge is to elicit mindful, semantic processing for the many lyrics that children sing with little effort. (AC)