Tasks involved in paired associate learning (attention, perceptual learning, visual and auditory memory, response learning, and stimulus-response connections) are identified as some of the same skills and strategies involved in learning to read. Two studies on visual memory, the developmental lag hypothesis, and reading ability are examined to show that memory strategies and the ability to encode these are important factors in visual memory and that good readers are superior to poor readers in differentiating hard to distinguish stimulus terms in paired associate learning tasks. Good readers are thought to have a superiority in perceptual learning and recall which transfers to reading subskills. Studies on attention, acquisition and transfer are examined along with models of memory and studies on the role of distinctive feature training in acquisition and transfer. The author concludes that attention and memory are active processes which involve the use of strategies and which undergo developmental changes. Teachers are urged to teach paired associate learning as a multistage process beginning with perceptual learning tasks in order to improve visual memory skills. Goals for beginning readers are said to be accuracy and automaticity in the following successive skills: distinctive feature learning, schemata (chunk) learning, and the making of stimulus-response connections. (GW)