Eighty four-year-old and 80 seven-year-old subjects were given a standard paired-associate learning (PAL) task and a battery of ability tasks (Labeling, Recognition, Labeling Time, Digit Span, Visual Memory, Spatial Relations, Vocabulary, and the Follow the Instructions test) to investigate the development of individual differences in visual abilities and verbal processes as related to the learning task. The paired-associate task showed two main effects; photographs were superior to words as stimuli, words were superior to photographs as responses, and there was an interaction between age and response items. Photographs as response items were an inhibiting factor to four-year-olds' learning but not to seven-year-olds'. A developmental trend was shown for all ability tasks, with seven-year-olds' performance significantly exceeding four-year-olds' performance on all tasks. Differences in abilities and in the factors demonstrated by the two age groups appear to indicate that a transition in cognitive processing occurs within the age range of our to seven as predicted by developmental cognitive theories. (Author/LL)