This experiment tested for age-linked asymmetries predicted under Node Structure theory (NST; D. G. MacKay & D. M. Burke, 1990) between detecting versus retrieving orthographic information. Older adults detected that briefly presented words were correctly spelled (e.g., endeavor) or misspelled (e.g., endeavuor) as readily as did young adults. However, they were less able than young adults to retrieve the correctly and incorrectly spelled words that they had seen. These age-linked asymmetries were not due to educational factors, stimulus characteristics, sensory-level factors, task complexity, floor or ceiling effects, general slowing, or cohort-related activities, but they were consistent with NST predictions and with similar asymmetries in a wide range of other studies. By contrast, repetition deficits in detecting and retrieving repeated- versus unrepeated-letter misspellings (e.g., elderdly vs. elderkly) were symmetrical or equivalent in magnitude for young and older adults. Implications for a wide range of theories of cognitive aging and of repetition deficits are discussed.

This comment corrects some inaccuracies, points to some methodological problems, and makes three substantive observations regarding the Altarriba and Soltano (1996) article. First, token individuation theory does not explain what is new and interesting in the Altarriba and Soltano data, namely cross-language semantic facilitation in lists and a list-sentence effect, that is, a large difference in the effect of semantic repetition when identical translation equivalents occurred in sentences versus lists. Second, Altarriba and Soltano's small and nonsignificant semantic blindness effect for translation equivalents in split-language sentences is attributable to the peculiar nature of their materials, procedures, analyses, and experimental design. These problems nullify their conclusion that semantic blindness does not occur, and we discuss several clear cases where semantic blindness has been demonstrated. Finally,we suggest an explanation for Altarriba and Soltano's unexplained effects (cross-language facilitation and the list-sentence effect) and show why these effects are important for the general issue of relations between language and memory.This commentary doesn't just discuss flaws and inaccuracies in the target article (Altarriba & Soltano, 1996). It also examines three new and unexplained effects in the Altarriba and Soltano data: cross-language facilitation in lists, a list-sentence difference, and the nonoccurrence ofsemantic blindness (SB) in the split-language sentences of their Experiment 1B. The commentary then addresses some theoretical and methodological implications ofthese effects and shows why they are important for anyone interested in the relation between language and memory. CROSS-LANGUAGE FACILITATIONCross-language facilitation is the unexplained new effect that appeared in Altarriba and Soltano (1996, Experiment 2), where the procedure was as follows: Proficient bilinguals immediately recalled rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) lists consisting critically of three words that were preceded and followed by masking stimuli (symbol strings) that participants were instructed to ignore. If the first and last words in the lists are labeled the "pretarget" and "target," respectively, the dependent variable was recall of the target (e.g., drive) as a function of whether its pretarget was identical (e.g., drive-drive), semantically identical (i.e., a translation equivalent, as in

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