Converging semantic and phonological information in lexical retrieval and selection in young and older adults

The present experiments investigated the influence of combined phonological and semantic information on lexical retrieval, metacognitive retrieval states, and selection in an immediate multiple-choice task. Younger and older adults attempted to retrieve words (e.g., abdicate) from low-frequency word definitions. Retrieval was preceded by primes that were "both" semantically and phonologically related (e.g., abandon), phonologically related (e.g., abdomen), semantically related (e.g., resign), or unrelated (e.g., pink). Younger and older adults benefited from phonological primes in retrieval, and also showed reduced, but reliable, facilitation from "both" primes. Younger and older adults also indicated that they were likely to "know" the answer more often after any related primes compared with unrelated primes. Because there was no facilitation in actual retrieval after semantic primes, this reflects a false "knowing" response. After each retrieval attempt, participants were given the correct answer along with the 4 primes in a multiple-choice test. Both younger and older adults were likely to false alarm to the "both" and semantic alternatives. When instructed that the prime was not the answer, younger adults decreased their false alarms, but not the older adults. With masked, briefly presented primes, younger adults mimicked the false alarms shown by older adults, suggesting that the high false alarm rates in older adults reflect an inability to discriminate the source of activation. The present experiments provide strong evidence for age-invariant phonological facilitation, and also suggest that overlapping semantic information moderates the facilitatory effect of phonological information on retrieval, and also produces age-related differences on an immediate multiple-choice task.