Abstract
Context is the milieu in which everything occurs. Many research studies consider context, or even explicitly manipulate it; yet it remains challenging to characterize. We know that a context surrounds and influences tasks; however, the boundaries of its influence are difficult to define. In behavioral science, context is often operationalized by the physical environment in which the experiment takes place, and the boundaries of the context are assumed to begin at the entrance to that of the room or apparatus. Experiences during transportation to the testing space have been shown to impact rodent behavior and memory, but transportation’s relationship with novelty and physical environment is not fully understood. The current study explored how familiar vs. novel cues, both within a physical environment and preceding it, impact the perception of a context. We manipulated context on three levels: physical testing environment, object cues within that environment, and transportation cues preceding entrance to the testing environment. We found that novel transportation cues can change rats’ perception of both familiar and novel contexts. The effects of transportation on perceived context may be affected by the length of the retention interval, testing environment, and behavioral range. These data suggest that context is a broad concept that includes cues across time and is sensitive to small differences in experience.
Highlights
Context is often mentioned, and even explicitly manipulated, in many research studies; yet it is rarely comprehensively defined
The anchored object study utilized a 2 × 3 object × context between-subject’s analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test the total duration of object exploration
The short retention interval study showed a trend indicating that object exploration changed after rats were transported via novel means: object exploration decreased after novel transportation and novelty-induced exploration of the novel object decreased relative to familiar transportation (Figure 3)
Summary
Even explicitly manipulated, in many research studies; yet it is rarely comprehensively defined. Context is often operationalized as the physical environment in which the experiment takes place (e.g., the room or apparatus) and the boundaries of the context are assumed to begin at the entrance to that environment in both time and space. Manipulations of the physical testing environment (e.g., changes to flooring, lighting, or scent) are practical to carry out and are common manipulations of context. While such manipulations have been used to demonstrate the importance of context in memory (Bouton and King, 1983; Wilson et al, 2013; Arias et al, 2015), the effects of shifting physical environments are far from uniform.
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