THE REPORT DESCRIBES 13 EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF LEARNING IN CHILDREN BETWEEN FOUR AND 12 YEARS OF AGE. THE EXPERIMENTS CONCERN--(1) THE ISOLATION CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH ELABORATIVE FACILITATION OF LEARNING OCCURS, AND (2) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELABORATION AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING PROFICIENCY. BECAUSE CHILDREN LEARN NOUN PAIRS AND SERIAL LISTS OF NOUNS MORE RAPIDLY WHEN THESE ARE PRESENTED IN A GRAMMATICAL VERBAL CONTENT, SEVERAL EXPLANATORY HYPOTHESES WERE SUBJECTED TO EMPIRICAL TESTS IN THE FIRST STUDY. THE RESULTS INDICATE THAT NOTIONS SUCH AS INTRA-LIST SIMILARITY, SEMANTIC CONSTRAINT, CONTEXT AVAILABILITY, IMPLIED OVERT ACTIVITY, AND VARIATIONS IN FUNCTIONAL STIMULI ARE INADEQUATE. THE REMAINING VIABLE HYPOTHESIS CONCERNS THE UNDERLYING SYNTACTICAL STRUCTURE OF VERBAL CONTESTS. FINALLY, PICTORIAL CONTESTS, ISOMORPHIC WITH THE VERBAL CONTESTS STUDIED, WERE FOUND TO PRODUCE PARALLEL FACILITORY EFFECTS. THE SECOND PROBLEM EXPLORED VARIATIONS IN THE EFFECTS OF ELABORATION AMONG CHILDREN CLASSIFIED BY AGE, SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (SES), AND INTELLIGENCE. BOTH VERBAL AND PICTORIAL ELABORATION WERE EFFECTIVE ACROSS THE AGE RANGE AND EQUIVALENCE IN LEARNING PROFICIENCY WAS OBSERVED ACROSS SES GROUPS EXCEPT WHEN REPETITION WAS IMPORTANT FOR PERFORMANCE. A TEST WAS DEVELOPED FOR THE PURPOSE OF INDEXING LEARNING ABILITY. INTELLIGENCE TESTS ARE NOT PREDICTIVE OF LEARNING PROFICIENCY AMONG LOW-SES CHILDREN, ALTHOUGH THEY ARE FOR MIDDLE-SES CHILDREN. (AUTHOR)