Age differences in recognition and recall of common nouns were studied using three groups of fifty students, with mean ages of 6.7, 11.4, and 16.9. Subjects were randomly placed in either an incidental or intentional learning condition. All subjects were questioned about the physical, phonemic, and semantic aspects of the same words, in the same sequence. Physical recall for 6-year olds was less than that of 17-year olds, but more than that of 11-year olds. The 11- and 17-year olds had phonemic and semantic recall scores superior to those of 6-years old, but at no level did their scores differ significantly from one another. Physical recognition was greater at age 17 than at ages 11 and 6; phonemic recognition was greater at ages 17 and 11 than at age 6. There were no age differences in semantic recognition. The fact that 11- and 17-year olds had similar recall at deeper levels of analysis and that all age groups were able to recognize words equally well following semantic processing, underlies the potency of processing depth as a factor affecting retention over and above increasing age. (CP)