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What does it take for context to support action memory?
Author(s) -
HELSTRUP TORE
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1996.tb00650.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cognitive psychology , action (physics) , encoding (memory) , recall , context (archaeology) , free recall , social psychology , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
Previous research on the relation between context and action memory has given ambiguous results. Some experiments have found positive context effects, whereas other experiments have failed to demonstrate a context effect in action memory. Under nonmotor encoding conditions orderly action‐locus pairings have been found to yield better recall than random pairings, this not being the case with motor encoding (Helstrup, 1989 a ). Three new experiments explored whether memory for loci could be linked with memory for action–using modified replications. The first experiment provided item‐specific reasons for the action‐locus connections, whereas the second experiment used a whole‐list relational context task. Both experiments indicated that contexts can influence action memory also under enactment conditions, with strongest effect for whole‐list contexts. The third experiment demonstrated how a positive context effect can be removed when the functional value of whole‐list relational support cues is reduced.