ADULT AGE-DIFFERENCES IN CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCES ON MEMORY FOR NOVEL ASSOCIATIONS

Forty-eight younger and 48 older adults generated sentences under self -paced conditions for semantically unrelated word pairs. Then they com pleted word + word stem pairs under inclusion and exclusion instructio ns for items that appeared in the same or different context relative t o study. Performance on the inclusion and exclusion tasks was transfor med into estimates of conscious and unconscious influences on memory b y a series of equations as specified by Jacoby's (1991) Process Dissoc iation Procedure (PDP). Three notable findings were obtained. First, y ounger and older adults displayed a context effect when conscious, but not unconscious, influences on memory were considered. Second, age in variance in the strength of unconscious influences on memory was obser ved when data analysis was performed on the entire subject sample. In contrast, the estimated strength of unconscious contributions to memor y was stronger for younger than older adults when data analysis was re stricted to participants who made errors on the exclusion task. Third, conscious influences on memory were stronger for younger than older a dults regardless of which method of data analysis was used. Taken toge ther, these findings shed light on previous research which has examine d the complex relationship between age, test awareness, and the implic it retention of novel verbal associations. They also highlight some of the methodological issues regarding the use of the PDP to measure age -related differences in the strength of unconscious memory processes.