Visual-verbal paired-associate learning (PAL) is thought to be related to reading acquisition and, more specifically, to word reading skills. To date, the uniqueness and strength of this relationship has remained unclear because most studies have been conducted in opaque orthographies such as English, and few studies have controlled for all of the…

Share's "self-teaching" model proposes that readers acquire most knowledge about the orthographic structure of words incidentally while reading independently. In the current study, the self-teaching hypothesis was tested by simulating everyday reading through the use of real words, analyzing the effects of context, and considering the independent…