A list of words was presented visually to 160 college students, who were asked to indicate whether each word had or had not appeared earlier on the list. Late in the list were associates of those 'critical stimulus' words that had appeared earlier, either one, three, five, or seven times. The frequency of false recognition of the associates first increased, then declined, as a function of the number of times their corresponding critical stimulus words had occurred, and was greater than that for nonassociates of previously appearing words. These results are considered in terms of a two-stage recognition model wherein the perceived situational frequency of a word is critical in the recognition decision. Several word-recognition studies have shown that the frequency of false recognition of words associatively related to previously appearing words is higher than for words not so related.1 This phenomenon has been interpreted as providing evidence for associative encoding for memory.2 That is, when a word is presented for learning, words associatively related to the word to be learned are elicited as implicit responses. These implicit associative responses (IARs) are encoded and stored along with the word to be learned, frequently leading to subsequent false recognitions. In earlier papers it was suggested that the perceived situational frequency of words presented for recognition is a critical cue for recognition decisions.3 This assumes, as proposed by Ekstrand, Wallace, and Underwood, that the frequency with which a word occurs is recorded in some manner.4 The perceived situational frequency of a word presented for recognition is a function of the number of prior presentations of the word (perceptions of the Received for publication November 4, 1969. The study was supported by a grant to the senior author from the United States Office of Education. 1 For example, see G. A. Kimble, Mediating associations, J. exp. Psychol., 76, 1968, 263-266. 2B. J. Underwood, Attributes of memory, Psychol. Rev., 1969, in press. 3 J. W. Hall, Errors in word recognition and discrimination by children of two age levels, J. educ. Psychol., 60, 1969, 144-147; J. Hall, R. Sekuler, and W. Cushman, Effects of IAR occurrence on response time during subsequent recognition, J. exp. Psychol., 79, 1969, 39-42. 4 B. R. Ekstrand, W. P. Wallace, and B. J. Underwood, A frequency theory of verbal discrimination learning, Psychol. Rev., 73, 1966, 566-578,