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 population of low socioeconomic status; those for the second experiment were 64 second-grade children from a white population of middle socioeconomic status. Subjects in both experiments learned 20 word-pairs by the study-test, paired-associate method. Retention was tested after a seven-day interval by the cued-recall method. Analyses of results indicated that aural-verbal and visual-pictorial elaboration facilitated the initial acquisition of noun pairs but did not influence long-term retention when the degree of original learning was equated. (Author/AA)