In conflict with a claim that situational frequency sensitivity is automatic, numerous experiments have reported that incidental and intentional learning conditions result in differing frequency estimates.  The current experiments examine an apparently weaker claim:  Is there evidence of frequency sensitivity for items that receive minimal attentional/intentional processing?  Experiment 1 requires recall of a list of words.  Following this intentional processing, a bogus debriefing mentions some of these words as examples.  A subsequent surprise frequency task asks for estimates of mention either (1) in the recall list context, (2) in the debriefing context, or (3) in both.  The results demonstrate that mention in either context intrudes on estimates for the other context.  Experiment 2 presents novel items in the debriefing, to examine the possibility that the results are due to residual activation causing focused processing of debriefing items.  Experiment 3 greatly reduces the number of examples cited, and presents items in two non-list contexts (orientation and debriefing).  Experiment 4, in the strongest source monitoring manipulation, has different experimenters present list and debriefing items.  These experiments support claims that sensitivity to frequency occurs under minimal attentional demands, and that source monitoring for frequency of mention in list and extra-list contexts may be difficult despite differences in memorial representation due to intentional versus incidental processing.  Additionally, it appears that post- encoding instructions can bias frequency estimates of already-encoded items.