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Two experiments were conducted to examine evidence for the automatic processing of information about presentation modality in older adults. Young (mean age = 22 years) and older adults (mean age = 69 years) were asked to learn a mixedmodality (auditory and visual) list of nouns, then to recall the target words, and finally to identify the presentation modality of each word on a recognition list. Half of the participants in each study were told in advance to also remember modality information. The experiments differed in the number of judgments that had to be made about each word in the recognition list. Two of Hasher and Zacks' (1979) criteria for automatic processing (no effect of intentionality and minimal interference with other processes occurring at the same time) were satisfied. The minimal developmental change criterion, however, was not. Although the performance of both age groups was above chance, some decrement in modality memory occurred in the older adults. The results both support the notion of an automatic encoding process for modality information and raise questions about the adequacy of the age-invanance criterion.

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A mixed-modality (visual and auditory) continuous recognition task, followed immediately by a final recognition test, was administered to young (18-23 years), mid-life (38-50 years), and older (60-74 years) women. Subjects gave recognition responses for both the words and their presentation modality. Although older adults remembered less information about input mode than did the two younger groups, the age decrement was not the result of faster forgetting of such information by the elderly. When a ceiling effect at the initial lag was taken into account, forgetting rates for both words and input mode were comparable across the adult life span.