Internal verbal processes were assumed to play a central role in complex school learning tasks. The research reported was concerned with a certain class of internal verbal behavior. The implicit associative response (IAR) was conceptualized as an internal verbal response that may occur when an individual sees or hears a word. Results of four experiments are given. The major purpose of experiments one, two, and four was to examine variables that may influence the frequency and nature of IAR's and to clarify the role of IAR's in learning and retention. Experiment three was designed to explore a second variable, the effects of instructions to pronounce words during learning on subsequent recognition performance. The subjects of the first two experiments were students at Northwestern University; children from prekindergarten through fourth grade were the subjects in the third and fourth experiments. Results indicated that associative encoding processes were modified by variation of the semantic context of the to-be-remembered word, that the perceived situational frequency of a word was critical in the recognition decision, that advance information had little effect on encoding but did affect the recognition-decision process, and that recognition performance was best when words were overtly pronounced. References are included. (Author/NH)