Environmental Context and Student Performance

Weir, Warren; May, Richard B.

doi:10.2307/1495290

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In addition to the courtroom, education is also replete with situations in which children learn information in environments that substantially differ from where they will eventually retrieve that information. Despite this, research on the context reinstatement effect in educational settings has focused primarily on adults (e.g., Grant et al, 1998; Koens, Ten Cate, & Custers, 2003; Weir & May, 1988), and in the handful of studies that involved children (Aslan, Samenieh, Staudigl, & Bäuml, 2010; Jensen, Harris, & Anderson, 1971), researchers have examined memory of simple lists rather than of information similar to that acquired through actual lessons. In comparison to findings from the forensic literature that children as young as preschool experience context reinstatement effects, children appear to be affected at a slightly later age (around 7 years) in educational settings, at least when simple information is presented in list form.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s learning and memory of an interactive science lesson: Does the context matter?

Imuta¹,

Scarf²,

Carson³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Children often learn information in a context that is vastly different to the one in which they are asked to recall or use that information. Despite this, little is known about the effect of context change on children's recall of educational information. Here, 197 5- and 6-year-olds were taught the same interactive lesson in their classroom or on a field trip and were tested after a 1- to 2-day and 6-month delay. The effect of learning context was more pronounced for older children, wherein the field trip yielded more autobiographically rich memories than the classroom, but they learned a similar amount of scientific content in both contexts. Furthermore, especially for older children who learned in their classrooms, their autobiographical memory was predictive of the amount of scientific information they recalled. The opportunity to mentally reinstate the learning context generally facilitated children's recollection of autobiographical information, but older children were more adept at effectively utilizing the mental reinstatement prompt to retrieve scientific information. (PsycINFO Database Record

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s learning and memory of an interactive science lesson: Does the context matter?

Imuta¹,

Scarf²,

Carson³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rather than supporting elaborative processing models, the results for synopses seem to support encoding specificity, such that matching conditions at presentation and test (i.e., absence of headline synopses) enhanced cognitive processing, whereas mismatching conditions across presentation and test inhibited cognitive processing [13][14][15]. The literature on encoding specificity generally suggests that congruent conditions across presentation and test produce the best retrieval, and the literature that generalizes the principle to different stimuli and conditions is fairly extensive [16][17][18][19]. In support of Tulving and Thomson's (1973) claim that the encoding specificity principle pertains to "all known phenomena of episodic memory and retrieval" (p. 370) [15], encoding specificity occurs across recall and recognition [20][21][22][23][24].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Evidence of Encoding Specificity for the Effects of Synopses on the Recognition of Believable and Unbelievable News Headlines

JA¹

2018

PPRIJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Gibbons, Lukowski, and Walker (2005) argued that elaborate processing explained the finding that unbelievable news headlines were recognized better than believable news headlines, and they suggested that headline synopses may further enhance processing. In Experiment 1, we tested whether elaborative synopses at presentation (i.e., learning) enhanced recognition, and we found that they decreased recognition. Instead of elaborate processing, these results were congruent with encoding specificity. In Experiments 2-5, we used reiterative synopses to create matching and mismatching synopsis conditions at presentation and test to assess encoding specificity. The results for Experiments 2-4 demonstrated encoding specificity for believable headlines, and the results for Experiment 5 showed encoding specificity for believable and unbelievable headlines. These results provide some support for encoding specificity in the realm of media headlines.

show abstract

“…For one, the sounds produced by the sound machine are digital sounding, which means the sounds are only vaguely similar to any sounds in nature. Additionally, environmental cues shown to enhance recall in other studies are not necessarily novel (e.g., Mozart and jazz music; Smith, 1985) and room color (Weir & May, 1988). Cues shown to enhance sleep-dependent memory consolidation are likewise commonplace: The odor used by Rasch et al (2007) was that of a rose, and sounds used by Rudoy et al (2009) included the whistle of a teakettle and a meow of a cat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Whether the environmental context can reactivate memories if presented throughout sleep has not been examined. Although Rasch et al (2007) posited that cues might be habituated if present during the whole sleep bout, continuous environmental cues from the learning environment (e.g., lighting, room arrangement, background sounds) have been shown to enhance performance even if present continuously during a recall episode (Abernathy, 1940; Standing et al, 2008; Weir & May, 1988). Moreover, contextual reactivation has only been demonstrated to enhance spatial learning tasks.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuous Re-Exposure to Environmental Sound Cues During Sleep Does Not Improve Memory for Semantically Unrelated Word Pairs

Donohue¹,

Spencer

2011

J Cogn Educ Psych

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two recent studies illustrated that cues present during encoding can enhance recall if re-presented during sleep. This suggests an academic strategy. Such effects have only been demonstrated with spatial learning and cue presentation was isolated to slow wave sleep (SWS). The goal of this study was to examine whether sounds enhance sleep-dependent consolidation of a semantic task if the sounds are re-presented continuously during sleep. Participants encoded a list of word pairs in the evening and recall was probed following an interval with overnight sleep. Participants encoded the pairs with the sound of “the ocean” from a sound machine. The first group slept with this sound; the second group slept with a different sound (“rain”); and the third group slept with no sound. Sleeping with sound had no impact on subsequent recall. Although a null result, this work provides an important test of the implications of context effects on sleep-dependent memory consolidation.

show abstract

Environmental Context and Student Performance

Cited by 8 publications

References 9 publications

Children’s learning and memory of an interactive science lesson: Does the context matter?

Children’s learning and memory of an interactive science lesson: Does the context matter?

Evidence of Encoding Specificity for the Effects of Synopses on the Recognition of Believable and Unbelievable News Headlines

Continuous Re-Exposure to Environmental Sound Cues During Sleep Does Not Improve Memory for Semantically Unrelated Word Pairs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About