Primacy and recency in primed free association and associative cued recall

Two experiments compared the serial positions of primed words in an implici t free association test with words recalled in a cued recall test. In both tests, weakly or strongly related word pairs were studied, and the first wo rds of each pair formed the test cues. In the implicit test, weakly related words pairs showed primacy and extended recency effects but strongly relat ed word pairs did not. In the explicit test, both weakly and strongly relat ed word pairs showed primacy and extended recency effects. These functional dissociations between implicit and explicit memory tests indicate that str ongly related word pairs are encoded together because they have unitized me mory representations that function as integrated units without requiring an y additional associative links to be made, but that an additional system or process is required to strengthen weakly related word pairs during encodin g. In addition, a further additional system or process is accessed by expli cit retrieval.