The rate with which perceptual information becomes available was manipulate
d in 2 word naming experiments. Word griming effects, in terms of reduced n
aming latencies for repeated items, and recognition memory measures were ob
tained with matched groups of amnesic patients and control participants. In
both experiments, the amnesic patients evidenced significantly reduced pri
ming effects compared to control participants under difficult task conditio
ns. Under easy task conditions the baseline naming latencies of the amnesic
s were significantly longer than those of controls, but the difference in p
riming effects failed to reach significance. The findings are consistent wi
th the Information Availability model of priming positing that both priming
and explicit memory are mediated by episodic information from a study or i
nformation processing episode. It is argued that word priming does not repr
esent a memory function that is spared in amnesia.