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Reading is a crucial skill for everyday life and understanding how we learn to read could have a large impact on educational practice. Recent studies have examined the role of domain-general learning mechanisms in reading, such as paired associate learning (PAL) and statistical learning (SL). However, results on their relationship to reading have been mixed and what role they play is unclear. To investigate this relationship the present study tested 73 adults on a visual-visual PAL task, visual SL (VSL) task, and 2 artificial orthography learning tasks. PAL was significantly correlated with learning orthographies both explicitly and implicitly taught. These results suggest that PAL supports learning letter-sound correspondences regardless of whether they are taught explicitly or implicitly. These findings also suggest that SL may play a more limited role in reading acquisition and that further research is needed to determine what aspects of reading acquisition it may support if any.