Level of processing and age affect involuntary conceptual priming of weak but not strong associates.
Memory for weak and strong semantic associates was compared in intentional associate-cued-recall and incidental free-association tests. This design yielded four conditions (weak/intentional, strong/intentional, weak/incidental, and strong/ incidental) on which younger and older adults were compared. Level of processing (LOP) and age effects occurred for the weak/intentional, strong/intentional, and weak/incidental conditions, but not for the strong/incidental condition. Because participants could not distinguish weak from strong associates during the memory tests, these results suggest that free-association priming was involuntary and was not contaminated by voluntary retrieval strategies. Instead, they suggest that encoding deficits related to shallower LOP and older age reduce involuntary free-association priming mainly for associates without cohesive preexperimental representations.
Ramponi
Cristina
C
Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK. Cristina.Ramponi@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
Richardson-Klavehn
Alan
A
Gardiner
John M
JM
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001244:Association; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D012660:Semantics; D014936:Word Association Tests