FOUR EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED TO STUDY EFFECTS OF VERBAL CUES ON LEARNING RETENTION AND TRANSFER. CUES INCLUDED RULES AND ANSWERS PROVIDED BEFORE RESPONDING AND RULES AND ANSWERS PROVIDED AS FEEDBACK. THE FIRST EXPERIMENT INVOLVED SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS WHO USED RULE AND ANSWER PROMPTS. THE SECOND EXPERIMENT CONSIDERED PROMPTS AND FEEDBACK. THE THIRD AND FOURTH EXPERIMENTS WERE PARALLEL WITH THE FIRST TWO BUT INVOLVED COLLEGE STUDENTS. MOTIVATION AND THE EFFECTIVITY OF TREATMENT WERE STUDIED IN ALL EXPERIMENTS. THE DEPENDENT VARIABLES WERE SCORES ON A TEST WHICH REQUIRED DECODING OF CRYPTOGRAMS AND ANOTHER REQUIRING DERIVATION OF DECODING RULES. NO SUBJECT IN EITHER GROUP TOOK BOTH TESTS. THE HYPOTHESIS THAT SPECIFICATION OF RULES AND ANSWERS WILL INCREASE PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMANCE TRANSFER WAS SUPPORTED BY THE FIRST EXPERIMENT AND PARTIALLY BY THE SECOND EXPERIMENT. ANSWERS USED AS FEEDBACK DID NOT PRODUCE INCREASED PERFORMANCE. THE HYPOTHESIS THAT RULE FEEDBACK WOULD BE INFERIOR TO ANSWER FEEDBACK WAS NOT SUPPORTED. FEEDBACK WHICH INCLUDED CORRECT ANSWERS INCREASED LEARNING ONLY IF THE ANSWERS WERE NOT PROVIDED AS PROMPTS. RESULTS OF THE THIRD AND FOURTH EXPERIMENTS SUPPORTED RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS ONE AND TWO. (WN)