Three experiments addressed the distinction between automatic and attentional mechanisms underlying semantic priming effects by factorially crossing prime-target relatedness, expectancy, and SOA in a task (pronunciation) that minimized postlexical checking processes. Also, possible age-related (young vs. older adults) differences in the automatic and attentional mechanisms were addressed. Across all experiments there was evidence of a Relatedness x Expectancy x SOA interaction, which is inconsistent with the notion of independent automatic and attentional mechanisms in semantic priming and the notion of a self-encapsulated modular lexicon. The results also indicated age-related differences in the build-up of the expectancy effect across SOAs when the prime was visually available for only 200 ms, independently of the prime-target SOA (Experiments 1 and 3), but not when the prime was visually available throughout the SOA (Experiment 2).

In four experiments, semantic satiation was investigated in young and old adults. In the first two experiments, subjects were repeatedly presented a word (e.g., DOG) and then were presented a pair of words (e.g., DOG-CAT or DOG-CHAIR) for a relatedness decision. The results of both experiments indicated that for the young adults, the relatedness effect (the difference between response latency on related and unrelated trials) decreased as a function of the number of times the satiated word was repeated, whereas for the older adults, there was no evidence of a decrease in the relatedness effect across repetitions of the satiated word. In the third experiment, we investigated whether phonological codes are also susceptible to satiation. This experiment was similar to the first two experiments with the exception that subjects made rhyme decisions (SAME-CLAIM vs. SAME-DIME) instead of semantic relatedness decisions. The results of this experiment did not yield any evidence of satiation for either the young adults or the older adults. The final experiment eliminated a simple decrease in attentional alertness or fatigue account of the semantic satiation effects found in the first two experiments. In this experiment, the repeated word was always unrelated to the pair of words presented for the relatedness decision, The results of this experiment did not yield any evidence of semantic satiation for either the young or the older adults. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms underlying semantic satiation and the implications of age-related changes in these mechanisms.One of the hallmarks of the cognitive processing system is that the repetition ofa stimulus facilitates the subsequent processing of that stimulus, In this light, it is intriguing that massed excessive exposure to a stimulus can actually inhibit subsequent processing ofthat stimulus, through satiation or habituation. Such a mechanism should have considerable evolutionary significance in that it would serve to bias the attentional system to further process new and changing (information laden) stimuli instead of old and/or static stimuli (MacKay, 1990). The focus of the present series of experiments was to explore a type of habit uation/satiation referred to as semantic satiation: the attenuation in the meaningfulness of a word that occurs as a result ofexcessive exposure to that word.In the present series of experiments, we had two major goals. First, we attempted to extend and further explore recent observations of semantic satiation. As will be discussed below, considerable controversy has surrounded This work was supported by NIA Grants POI AG03991 and ROI AGIOI93, and represents a totally collaborative effort. Portions of this research were presented at the 65th annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association. We thank

The performance of CAMCOG, the cognitive section of the CAMDEX, is compared in a non-random sample of 222 elderly people with diagnoses based on AGECAT and on DSM-III criteria, and with the MMSE and some short rating scales. With a cut-off point of 69/70 and AGECAT organic syndrome as the criterion, the sensitivity of CAMCOG was 97% and the specificity 91%. However, 21% of DSM-III diagnoses of dementia scored above this cut-off; these were mostly mild cases. The correlation between CAMCOG and MMSE scores was 0.87, and the advantage of CAMCOG may be more apparent in longitudinal studies. Multivariate analyses showed that CAMCOG scores are affected by age, sociocultural factors and hearing and visual deficits in addition to dementia, but not by depression. There was a suggestion that individual subsections are differentially affected.

Age-related differences in cognitive processes were used to understand agerelated declines in creativity. According to the Geneplore model (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992), there are two phases of creativity -generating an idea and exploring the implications of the idea -each with different underlying cognitive processes. These two phases are measured in the Creative Invention Task (CIT; Finke, 1990). Younger adults (n = 41) and older adults (n = 41) completed the CIT, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), and a measure of working memory capacity (Paper Folding test). In addition, the CIT was scored by both younger and older adults. There were age-related declines on both phases of the CIT, but not on the TTCT. These declines were noted by both the younger and older raters. After adjusting for working memory capacity, however, age-related differences on the CIT were nonsignificant.

This study examines the effects of semantic satiation on lexical ambiguity resolution. On a given trial, participants were presented with a word triad. The first word (e.g., HEART) was presented on average 2.5, 12.5, or 22.5 times, and then participants received 2 new words for relatedness judgments. The first of the two new words was always a homograph (e.g., "ORGAN") and the other word was a related or unrelated pairmate (e.g., "KIDNEY"). In Experiment 1, when blocks of trials were intermixed with concordant (e.g., "HEART-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), discordant (e.g., "PIANO-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), and neutral (e.g., "CEILING-ORGAN-KIDNEY") trials, participants did not produce evidence of semantic satiation. In a second experiment in which only concordant and neutral trials were presented, however, participants did produce evidence of semantic satiation in the concordant condition. Taken together, Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that semantic satiation of the context-appropriate meaning of a homograph may impede ambiguity resolution.