Aging and negative priming: Is ignored information inhibited or remembered?

We had younger. and older adults complete Two tasks that tested the attenti onal- and memory-based inhibition models of negative priming. One task viol ated May, Kane, & Hasher (1995, Psychological Bulletin, 118, 35-54) criteri a for measuring just attentional inhibition, by including a repeated-target condition. The other task complied with these criteria and included a dept h of processing manipulation, where participants selected prime targets bas ed either on their letter-length (nonsemantic processing) or weight (semant ic processing). On balance, results supported the memory model, because dep th of processing clearly moderated younger adult negative priming, and olde r adults displayed,negative priming only in the task satisfying the attenti onal-inhibition criteria (i.e., the depth of processing task). We conclude that memory factors model ate negative priming, and that May et al.'s crite ria fail to pl edict wizen older adults will show the effect.