Effects of Changes in Relative Cue Strength on Context-Dependent Recognition

Abstract

Theoretical analyses and empirical studies address the issue of how context-dependent recognition is affected by changes in the relative strength of retrieval cues. Analyses of global memory models based on K. Murnane and M. P. Phelps' (1994) general context model showed that if context strength is held constant, context effects are predicted to either increase or remain unchanged when item strength increases. In contrast, the outshining hypothesis (S. M. Smith, 1988, 1994) predicts that context effects will decrease as item strength increases. Three studies are reported in which item strength was manipulated with spaced repetitions, study time, or a levels-of-processing manipulation. The results support the general context model. Implications for the outshining hypothesis and for global memory models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

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Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition
1995,
Vol. 21, No.
1,158-172
Copyright 1995 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0278-7393/95/S3.00
Effects of Changes in Relative Cue Strength
on Context-Dependent Recognition
Kevin Murnane and Matthew P. Phelps
Pennsylvania State University
Theoretical analyses and empirical studies address the issue of how context-dependent recognition
is affected by changes in the relative strength of retrieval cues. Analyses of global memory models
based on K. Murnane and M. P. Phelps' (1994) general context model showed that if context
strength is held constant, context effects are predicted to either increase or remain unchanged
when item strength increases. In contrast, the outshining hypothesis (S. M. Smith, 1988, 1994)
predicts that context effects will decrease as item strength increases. Three studies are reported in
which item strength was manipulated with spaced repetitions, study time, or a levels-of-processing
manipulation. The results support the general context model. Implications for the outshining
hypothesis and for global memory models are discussed.
Almost all theories of memory propose that memory perfor-
mance is sensitive to the relative memory strength of the
information in the cues used to probe memory during a
retrieval task. In this article, we use Murnane and Phelps'
(1994) general context model to explore the effects of changes
in relative cue strength within global activation systems of
recognition. Several widely cited studies have failed to find an
effect on recognition of changes in context between learning
and test. A prominent explanation of this failure holds that
context dependence is not always observed in recognition
because the difference in the relative memory strengths of the
item and context information in the typical recognition test cue
masks the effects of changes in context between learning and
test. We demonstrate the limited conditions under which
global activation theories predict this masking effect and
present three studies in which no evidence of masking was
found. We also show that current versions of specific global
activation theories are capable of predicting the effects of
changes in relative cue strength on context-dependent recogni-
tion that were observed in the studies.
A fundamental problem that any theory of memory must
solve is how people are able to access or retrieve an individual
episode from among the many, often similar, episodes that are
stored in memory. Many current theories seek to solve this
problem with mechanisms that link the probability of success-
ful retrieval of an episode to the degree to which the informa-
tion in the episode matches, or is similar to, the information in
the retrieval cue (Tulving,
1983;
Tulving & Thompson, 1973).
In many theories, (mis)matched context information is seen as
Kevin Murnane and Matthew P. Phelps, Department of Psychology,
Pennsylvania State University.
This research was supported in part by Grant SBR-9319549 from the
National Science Foundation and a research initiation grant from
Pennsylvania State University. We thank Douglas Hintzman and
Steven M. Smith for their helpful comments on a draft of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Kevin Murnane, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity, 519 Moore Building, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802.
Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to kxm20@psuvm.psu.edu.
especially important in the retrieval of individual episodes.
Context information
is
usually thought of as information that is
present in the processing environment, either at encoding or at
retrieval, and that
is
peripheral to or incidental to the cognitive
task being performed. For example, suppose a reader were
trying to retrieve the contents of this article several days after
having read it. The content of the article is considered to be
item or target information. Context information that was
encoded along with the item information might include details
about the room in which the paper was read (environmental
context), relevant or irrelevant information retrieved from
memory when reading the paper (semantic context), and
information concerning the mood (emotional context) or
physiological condition (physiological context) while reading
the paper. Because the unique episode of reading the paper is
stored in memory as an amalgam of item and context informa-
tion, the probability of successful retrieval of the sought-after
item information from the episode can be enhanced by
including the appropriate context information in the retrieval
cue.
The match between context information at learning and at
retrieval has been identified as an important factor determin-
ing retrieval of a specific learning episode (Gillund & Shiffrin,
1984;
Humphreys, Bain, & Pike, 1989), and mismatched
context information at learning and at retrieval has been
identified as an important cause of forgetting (Bjork &
Richardson-Klavehn, 1989; Mensink & Raaijmakers, 1988,
1989;
Raaijmakers
&
Shiffrin,
1981;
Smith, 1988).
The idea that context information plays an important role in
the retrieval of individual episodes leads to a straightforward
prediction: Testing memory in an environmental context that is
different from the learning context should have a negative
effect on performance. Studies that have tested memory with
either free or cued recall have generally verified this prediction
(although see Fernandez & Glenberg, 1985, for a notable
exception). However, previous studies that have explored
context-dependent recognition have produced conflicting re-
sults (see Smith, 1988, for a review of both the recognition and
recall literature). Testing in an environmental context that is
different from the learning context has affected recognition
performance in a number of studies (Geiselman
&
Bjork, 1980;
158
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