Standard context-dependent memory studies have shown that when information is encoded in a certain environmental context (EG), recall performance is weakened when retrieval occurs in a different, rather than the same, EG. Here, we show that this contextdependent forgetting can be eliminated using mental imagery at encoding. In two studies, partiCipants used mental visualization of the retrieval EG during the encoding process. The results of the first study highlighted the importance of context familiarity. When familiarity was controlled in the second study, users of the mental visualization technique who encoded and retrieved in different EGs showed no context-dependent forgetting as compared with participants who encoded and retrieved in the same EG. These findings suggest that information can become linked with mental images of EGs such that the physical instantiation of an imagined EG can function as effectively as physical EG reinstatement and eliminate context-dependent forgetting.Empirical work on memory and environmental context (EC) spanning the past three decades has shown that recall performance can be strongly affected by the relationship between the EC in which information was encountered (encoded) and the EC in which the retrieval of that information takes place. It is a common finding that, if the EC at the encoding phase differs from that at retrieval, memory performance is poorer than that when the EC at encoding and retrieval are the same; an effect known as context-dependent forgetting (e.g
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