Abstract: With frequently used Chinese words as studying material, this experiment, was based on the scale of word associative level(WAL) to establish after a great amount of statistical work,to probe how the WAL, processing methods during learning and age can influence the priming effect of word remembering. It was discovered:(a) the divergences of influence of different word associative level on the priming effect was significant,(b)only undergraduate subjects's priming effects were affected by processing methods, (c) the function of age on priming effect were mainly caused by its transaction with WAL. All performance and date treatment were done with IBM/PC.

Key words: word associative level(WAL), processing methods, priming effect, development