The effects of two types of elaboration training (imagery and sentence generation) on the paired associate learning of 32 educable mentally retarded children (aged 9 to 13 years were compared over two levels of verbalization (none and overt). Each S was first tested on a warmup list, then trained to generate elaborations, and finally given two trials to learn a list of 18 noun pairs. Data indicated that overt verbalization would facilitate recall under both types of elaboration training, but not that recall would be better facilitated by imagery than by sentence elaboration. Possible explanations of the general effectiveness of overtly verbalized elaboration were examined. Appendixes included instructions from each of the four treatment conditions. (Author/GW)