Priming in Episodic Memory

Abstract

Young and old adults studied related and unrelated word pairs and were given both cued recall and recognition tests. The recognition test required speeded responses to single words. The test order was constructed so that half of the B items from each A-B pair were preceded by its paired A item whereas the other half of the B items were preceded by some other old item. Priming was measured as the difference in reaction time between these two types of items. Significant age differences were found in both recall and recognition accuracy, but young and old adults showed equal amounts of priming. There were significant main effects of relatedness on all three dependent measures, but only in cued recall was there a larger age deficit for unrelated items. The results are inconsistent with an age-related deficit for integrating pairs of words at encoding and suggest, instead, an impairment of effortful retrieval processes.