Two experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of between-item and within-item elaborations on incidental learning of words. Three targets of each triplet eliciting a converging associate were presented in massed or spacing fashion. In Experiments I and II, subjects were asked to rate the relation between each target and its paired word (associate in Exp. I or non-associate in Exp. II) with a five-point scale followed by free recall and recognition tests. Recall performances and clustering scores of targets as converging associates were recognized proved to be higher than their specific associates. The massed presentation led to a better recall than did the spacing presentation. The clustering score was also higher in the massed than in the spacing presentation. These results in Exp. I showed that the between-item elaboration was more effective than the within-item elaboration in a free recall, and that the massed presentation led to an effective between-item elaboration. The effects of types of presentation on recall performance and clustering scores were not observed in Exp. II. These above results showed that the semantic relation between the targets and the added information was critical to an effective elaboration.