Twenty four educable retarded males (eight gainers, eight non-gainers, and eight high scorers) were given an 18-item picture paired-associates task. Results showed that gainers learned more slowly than high scorers but the two groups together did not differ from nongainers. The following two interpretations were offered. With a minimal memory load, groups do not differ in ability to learn the paired-associates task, but when the load is increased to 10 items there may be a point at which nongainers are outperformed by gainers. When the load increases to 18 the performance of the gainers breaks down and both groups learn more slowly than high scorers. Secondly, there may be no memory load curve that differentiates gainers from nongainers, although increasing the load further differentiates the two groups from the high scorers. (Author/RJ)