Abstract
Forty eight older adults, sampled from two senior communities, watched a series of words on a computer monitor and then took a written exam that tested their explicit word recall. Results revealed a main effect for presentation, such that participants correctly recalled more words when those words were presented for 2 seconds than when those words were presented for .04 seconds. Results also revealed an interaction between presentation and processing, where the supraliminal presentation yielded more correctly recalled words in thematic conditions than in non-thematic conditions. These results suggest that older adults exhibit higher explicit memory performance when words belonging to a theme or category are presented within conscious awareness than outside awareness, likely because they are able to process the information more deeply.