In two experiments, differences were investigated between youths (mean age 13 years) and comparison groups with respect to (1) performance on paired-associate tasks involving meaningful and nonmeaningful words, (2) reported use of spontaneously produced learning strategies, and (3) degree to which learning strategies facilitated recall. Under free-study conditions, gifted youths outperformed their age peers in recall and strategy use, for both meaningful and nonmeaningful word pairs. In both experiments, gifted youths differentially benefited from mediational strategy use. Findings support the notion that gifted youths differ with respect to strategy use from their age peers and that they employ and benefit from strategies more like those used by older subjects. These learning strategies, when produced in sufficient numbers, accounted for a large part of the observed performance differences on verbal learning tasks between gifted Ss and their age peers. (Author/CL)