Levels-of-processing effects on conceptual automatic memory

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This study aimed to provide converging evidence for the conceptual processing effect on conceptual priming that involved automatic retrieval. Two experiments examined whether the levels-of-processing manipulation affects the conceptual priming effect in the speeded category-production task and the relation between the magnitude of conceptual priming and the level of participants’ awareness of the study–test relationship. In the implicit category-production task, participants were required to respond to the category name with the first corresponding category member to come to mind, whereas in the explicit category-cue recall task, participants were instructed to use the category name as a cue to recall the studied word. Response speed was emphasised for all participants. The results, based on response times, suggest that the implicit groups did not shift to a conscious retrieval strategy after the practice trial. The magnitude of priming was also not related to participants’ test-awareness. Furthermore, both conceptual implicit and explicit tests were sensitive to the levels-of-processing manipulation after considering the problems of both conscious contamination and diminished lexical processing. Using a purer measure of conceptual implicit memory, this study replicated the previous findings of the levels-of-processing effect on the conceptual implicit test.