The author examined relationships between message organization, message uncertainty, and verbal learning. Message organization was manipulated by varying the distance between repeated subject-verb-object triples in a sequence of sentences. Message uncertainty was defined as the uncertainty (variability) of word selections for subjects responding to messages where certain words were deleted from the text. Verbal learning was measured by looking at the uncertainty of word selections after subjects had read intact texts. Two messages were designed for this study, the second constructed with a larger number of lexical choices for the purpose of increasing the uncertainty of responses. Results from a total of 180 subjects indicated that when messages were presented in a disorganized form, uncertainty increased significantly. No significant differences were found for messages with and without introductory paragraphs. The results indicated a relationship between learning and processes of uncertainty reduction. Uncertainty scores obtained for messages and sentences did provide an index of learning difficulty. (Author/RN)