Word Frequency Effects in Priming Performance in Young and Older Adults

The present study examined word frequency effects on implicit priming in older adults compared with younger adults. In Experiment 1 participants performed a spelling test consisting of primed and unprimed homophones (e.g., mourning) and nonhomophones (e.g., militant). Older adults spelled more unprimed, low-frequency homophones than did younger adults, suggesting that there are age-related differences in base-rate spelling of lower frequency homophones. Experiment 2 involved a word-fragment completion task that primed both high- and low-frequency words. Young adults showed larger priming effects for low-frequency words, whereas older adults showed smaller and similar priming effects for high- and low-frequency words. Experiment 3 replicated the finding that word frequency has no effect on priming performance in older adults on a word-fragment completion task. These studies found differential word frequency effects on priming performance between young and older adults.