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

Abstract

To address questions about human memory's dependence on the coincidental environmental contexts in which events occur, we review studies of incidental environmental context-dependent memory in humans and report a meta-analysis.Our theoretical approach to the issue stems from Glenberg' s (1997) contention that introspective thought (e.g., remembering, conceptualizing) requires cognitive resources normally used to represent the immediate environment. We propose that if tasks encourage processing of noncontextual information (i.e., introspective thought) at input and/or at test, then both learning and memory will be less dependent on the ambient environmental contexts in which those activities occur. The meta-analysis showed that across all studies, environmental context effects were reliable, and furthermore, that the use of noncontextual cues during learning (overshadowing) and at test (outshining), as well as mental reinstatement of appropriate context cues at test, all reduce the effect of environmental manipulations. We conclude that environmental context-dependent memory effects are less likely to occur under conditions in which the immediate environment is likely to be suppressed.

Reinstatement of Conditioned Fear in Humans Is Context Dependent and Impaired in Amnesia.

“…Despite the predominant role of spatiotemporal binding in theories of memory function, environmental contextual manipulations on memory have produced inconsistent results in the laboratory (Fernandez & Glenberg, 1985). There have been several successful reports of context-facilitated memory when items are studied and tested in the same environmental setting (Balch, Bowman, & Mohler, 1992;Godden & Baddeley, 1975;Parker & Gellatly, 1997;Schab, 1990;Smith, 1985Smith, , 1988. These studies have involved direct memory assessments, such as recall and recognition, which tap into explicit or declarative memory processes (Schacter, 1987;Squire, 1992).…”

The influence of partner-specific memory associations on language production: Evidence from picture naming

“…This repetition of prime-target pairings is thought to establish implicit contextual encodings that facilitate word recognition, even at short SOAs. Also relevant is the work on context-dependent memory, which has shown that material learned under particular conditions is recalled better if those same conditions are reinstated at test (Smith, 1988;. Although context-dependent memory has been observed most frequently in tasks that measure explicit recall, reinstatement of the same context at test has been shown to facilitate conceptual implicit memory as well (Parker, Gellatly, & Waterman, 1999).…”

Augmenting Context-Dependent Memory

“…Research on context-dependent memory finds consistent advantages for reinstating context (J. R. Anderson, 1983;Bower, 1967;McGeoch, 1942;Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981;Tulving, 1974Tulving, , 1983; however, the size of these effects tends to be small (for a review, see Smith & Vela, 2001). One reason that these effect sizes are small is that most studies were designed to isolate the factors that contribute to contextdependent memory effects.…”

“…Smith and Vela (2001) noted in their meta-analyses that recall is best when the people associated with the context are the same at encoding and retrieval. Like voices and faces, distinctive sounds associated with the environment at encoding also serve as cues for successful retrieval.…”

“…Smith and Vela (2001) reviewed the literature on context-dependent memory and identified those factors that consistently produced large effect sizes across studies.…”