Using preexperimental familiarity to compare the ICE and cue-overload accounts of context-dependent memory in item recognition.

Abstract

In recognition, context effects often manifest as higher hit and false-alarm rates to probes tested in an old context compared with probes tested in a new context; sometimes, this concordant effect is accompanied by a discrimination advantage. According to the cue-overload account of context effects (Rutherford, 2004), context acts like any other cue, and thus context effects should be larger with lighter context loads. Conversely, the Item, Associated Context, and Ensemble (ICE) account (Murnane et al., 1999) attributes context effects to two factors: subjects erroneously attributing context familiarity to the probe, and the formation of ensembles (mnemonic combinations of item and context). Context familiarity increases as exposure at study increases, and thus ICE predicts larger effects of context as context load increases. Relatedly, ICE predicts larger effects of context as context meaningfulness increases, as meaningful contexts are more likely to be bound to the target in an ensemble. In Experiments 1 and 2, rather than manipulate context load during the study phase, we relied on subjects' preexperimental context exposure to manipulate context load. Subjects studied words superimposed on photographs of their university campus or another university campus. At test, targets and distractors were evenly divided between study and novel contexts and between familiar and unfamiliar contexts. In Experiment 3, we manipulated context familiarity within the experimental session. Results supported ICE, suggesting that context does not act as a retrieval cue in recognition.

Two dichotomies of recognition memory.

“…This benefit has been demonstrated with a variety of different manipulations of context that have included changes in the physical environmental (e.g., Emmerson, 1986; Godden & Baddeley, 1975, 1980; Smith et al, 1978), state-dependent effects (Eich, 1995), differences in mood states (e.g., Bower, 1981; Eich, 1985; Eich & Metcalfe, 1989; Weingartner et al, 1977), background music (Smith, 1985), body posture (Rand & Wapner, 1967), different script fonts of words (e.g., Reder, Donavos, et al, 2002), and the semantic context of words (e.g., Light & Carter-Sobell, 1970; Tulving & Thomson, 1971). As Ensor and Surprenant (2021) have noted, context has also been implicated in explanations of a variety of different cognitive phenomena including the recency effect (Glenberg et al, 1983), the spacing effect (Glenberg, 1979; Greene & Stillwell, 1995), the list-length effect (Dennis & Humphreys, 2001; Ensor et al, 2020), the list-strength effect (Malmberg & Shiffrin, 2005), intentional forgetting (Hanczakowski et al, 2012; Sahakyan & Kelley, 2002), and retrieval-induced forgetting (Jonker et al, 2013, 2015).…”

“…These distinctions included interactive versus independent (Baddeley, 1982), integrated versus nonintegrated (Eich, 1985), context α versus context β (Wickens, 1987), local versus global (Dalton, 1993; Glenberg, 1979), and nonincidental versus incidental (Smith & Vela, 2001). The characterization of context as local versus global has predominated in the literature, but as Ensor and Surprenant (2021) discuss, all of these distinctions have failed to provide a complete characterization of context effects.…”

“…Ensor et al (in press, Experiment 2) examined the role of the familiarity of the context on the effects of context. Participants studied words presented on background photographs of campus scenes.…”