In the course of sentence processing, comprehenders must
identify relationships between sentence elements in accor-
dance with the sentence’s syntactic structure. However, low-
level associative processes, which may yield interpretations in-
compatible with global sentence context, have also been sug-
gested to be at play in the early moments of processing. In two
experiments, we examine the influence of low-level associa-
tive cues alongside combinatorial information in sentences of
varying complexity. Verb-driven predictions are used as means
to explore the use of these information sources in the earliest
moments of processing. In addition, we explore effects of lis-
tener age on processing, given past claims that older adults’
predictions are more shallow. However, results showed similar
patterns across age groups, although we did find clear ways in
which associative cues overshadowed combinatorial computa-
tions when these cues occurred very close to the verb.