Memory for frequency as a function of environmental context

Abstract

Comparative or absolute judgments of word-presentation frequency were studied in two experiments involving proactive-interference <PD and retroactive-interference <RD designs, manipulation of same and different environmental contexts for list presentation, and manipulation ofsame and different environmental contexts (relative to the critical list) for the frequency-judgment task. Comparative judgments yielded both PI and RI. Absolute judgments produced not only PI and RI, but also an interaction with the two context factors. PI and RI groups judged most accurately when the two lists had been presented in different contexts and judgment took place in the critical list context, and when the two lists had been presented in the same context and judgment was in a neutral context. Poorest performance occurred when presentation context was the same and judgment occurred in the same context, and when presentation contexts were different but judgment was in the nontarget list context.

Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis

“…More recent research has obtained interference reduction effects while controlling for physical disruption (e.g., Eckert, Kanak, & Stevens, 1984). Reinstatement effects, which are now investigated more commonly than interference reduction, refer typically to the finding of better memory when the learning environment is reinstated at test than when testing occurs in a different environment.…”

PI and RI in serial learning as a function of environmental context

“…Within the past 15 years theoretical and empirical research interest in the phenomena of the context effect upon memory has grown rapidly among researchers in human cognition (e.g. Block, 1982;Block and Reed, 1978;Canas and Nelson, 1986;Dolinsky and Zabrucky, 1983;Eckert, Kanak, and Stevens, 1984;Hintzman, Block, and Summers, 1973;Humphreys, Pike, Bain, and Tehan, 1988;Glenberg, Bradley, Kraus, and Renzaglia, 1983;Nixon andKanak, 1981,1985;Rothkopf, Fisher, and Billington, 1982;Smith, 1979Smith, , 1982Smith, , 1984Smith, , 1985aSmith, ,b, 1986Smith, Glenberg, and Bjork, 1978;Smith and Rothkopf, 1984;Smith, Vela, and Williamson, 1988), as well as those interested in animal learning and cognition (e.g. Balaz, Copra, Hartl, and Miller, 1981;Bouton and Bolles, 1979;Grau and Rescorla, 1984;Jobe, Mellgren, Feinberg, Littlejohn, and Rigby, 1977;Lovibond, Preston, and Mackintosh, 1984;Riccio, Richardson, and Ebner, 1984;Spear, 1973;1978;Wickens, Tuber, and Wickens, 1984;and Zentall, 1970).…”

“…The present experiments investigated the effects of environmental context manipulations upon the classical serial learning task (Ebbinghaus, 1885). The broader outlines of the theoretical underpinnings which guide this research are captured in Eckert, Kanak, and Stevens (1984), Nixon and Kanak (1985), and Postman and Underwood (1973). Principal tenets to be kept in mind are that: (1) contextual associations are a relatively pure form of incidental learning in which, without awareness, associations are formed between general contextual stimuli in the environment and list items;…”

Moveable Cues: a Practical Method for Reducing Context-Dependent Forgetting

“…In practice, however, EC effects are not readily obtained, even though room environments in experiments that have considered EC effects have often been made as noticeably different from each other as possible (Dolinsky and Zabrucky, 1983;Eckert, Kanak and Stephens, 1984;Greenspoon and Ranyard, 1957;Mayes, Meudell and Som, 1981;Smith, 1979Smith, , 1985b.…”