Two experiments were conducted in which a total of 96 younger adults and 96 older adults performed an associative priming task either 10 minutes or 4 days after they generated sentences to semantically unrelated, low-frequency word pairs. Results indicated that more younger adults than older adults were classified as test aware. More importantly, both younger and older test aware subjects displayed associative priming, whereas test unaware subjects, regardless of age, failed to display associative priming. Alternatively, younger and older subjects, independent of awareness status, exhibited nonassociative priming. the magnitude of the nonassociative priming effect, however, was found to be larger for younger than older adults. These findings establish an important link between aging, associative priming, and test awareness. Furthermore, they call into question whether test awareness is a cause or a consequence of associative priming, and if test unawareness represents a breakdown in declarative memory or source memory.
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