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.