This study was designed to determine whether advance organizers in the form of visual aids might serve the same function as Ausubel's verbal advance organizers. The basic design of the study consisted of a 4 X 3 X 2 ANOVA factorial design. Ninety-six eighth-grade students were involved in the study. One group was exposed to a physiographic diagram of the North Atlantic Ocean Floor. A second group was exposed to a topographic profile of the North Atlantic Ocean Floor. A third group read a five-hundred word passage dealing with the same information as was covered on the other group of advance organizers. A fourth group functioned as a control group. Following the examination of the organizers, all students read a 1,100-word new learning task dealing with continental drift which used ocean floor features as illustration of the theory. ANOVA treatment of the post-test scores revealed that visual advance organizers functioned at a significant level whereas the expository organizer did not function for any of the groups in the study. (BR)