Repetition priming in children and adults: Age-related dissociation between implicit and explicit memory

Abstract

Three experiments investigated age differences in repetition priming effects on word-fragment completion as contrasted with explicit recall and recognition. It was found that priming effects did not differ across ages from 7 years old to adulthood under both physical and categorical encoding conditions. In contrast, recall increased with age especially when preceded by categorical encoding. Furthermore, the time course of priming in 7 year olds, 12 year olds, and adults was different from that of recognition in these age groups: Subjects' priming did not change significantly between 7-min and 6-day intervals, whereas their recognition memory diminished considerably over these intervals. These results suggest that implicit memory, measured by repetition priming, is insensitive to age differences and to encoding and delay conditions, which have large effects on explicit memory.