Effects Of Context Change Research Articles

Recalling more each time: context change effects in hypermnesia.

Hypermnesia, the increase in recall over trials without relearning or re-exposure to the studied items, has intrigued researchers since Ballard first reported the effect in 1913. In the typical hypermnesia study, additional retrieval trials are unexpected, and when announced, may induce context changes that re-focuses attention and effort on retrieving unrecalled items. The present studies examined the effects of context change on retrieval by telling some participants prior to study (trials-known condition) that three trials will be given to recall line drawings (Experiment 1) or words (Experiment 2) whereas others were not so informed (hypermnesia condition). Results of Experiment 1 revealed hypermnesia but no between-group differences on the sub-processes of item gains, losses, or intrusions. In Experiment 2, hypermnesia and between-group differences were found for item gains and intrusions, results that were marginally significant when data were aggregated across both experiments. Results are discussed in terms of the change in cue set hypothesis (Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1980) and the effects of internal and external context changes on hypermnesia. Suggestions for future studies are also presented.

Effects of Context Changes on Memory Reactivation.

While the influence of context on long-term memory (LTM) is well documented, its effects on the interaction between working memory (WM) and LTM remain less understood. In this study, we explored these interactions using a delayed match-to-sample task, where participants (6 males, 16 females) encountered the same target object across six consecutive trials, facilitating the transition from WM to LTM. During half of these target repetitions, the background color changed. We measured the WM storage of the target using the contralateral delay activity in electroencephalography. Our results reveal that task-irrelevant context changes trigger the reactivation of long-term memories in WM. This reactivation may be attributed to content-context binding in WM and hippocampal pattern separation.

Habit and persistence.

Voluntary behaviors (operants) can come in two varieties: Goal-directed actions, which are emitted based on the remembered value of the reinforcer, and habits, which are evoked by antecedent cues and performed without the reinforcer's value in active memory. The two are perhaps most clearly distinguished with the reinforcer-devaluation test: Goal-directed actions are suppressed when the reinforcer is separately devalued and responding is tested in extinction, and habitual behaviors are not. But what is the function of habit learning? Habits are often thought to be strong and unusually persistent. The present selective review examines this idea by asking whether habits identified by the reinforcer-devaluation test are more resistant to extinction, resistant to the effects of other contingency change, vulnerable to relapse, resistant to the weakening effects of context change, or permanently in place once they are learned. Surprisingly little evidence supports the idea that habits are permanent or more persistent. Habits are more context-specific than goal-directed actions are. Methods that make behavior persistent do not necessarily work by encouraging habit. The function of habit learning may not be to make a behavior strong or more persistent but to make it automatic and efficient in a particular context.

Evaluating effects of context changes on resurgence in humans

Laboratory models of relapse provide methods for evaluating challenges to behavioral treatments with differential reinforcement of an alternative response (DRA). Resurgence occurs with the worsening of conditions of reinforcement for appropriate behavior and renewal occurs when transitioning out of a treatment context. Across five experiments, participants recruited via online crowdsourcing pressed onscreen buttons to earn points exchangeable for money and contexts sometimes changed through changes in the background image. Returning to the training context (ABA, Experiment 1) and transitioning to a novel context (ABC, Experiment 2) produced greater resurgence when removing alternative reinforcement in comparison with remaining in the treatment context (ABB). In contrast, we observed little difference in resurgence among AAA, ABB, and AAC context manipulations (Experiment 3) and ABA, ABC, and AAC context manipulations (Experiment 4). In Experiment 5, we evaluated relative contributions of the presence versus absence of context changes (ABA vs. ABB) in combination with or without the removal of alternative reinforcement. Both changing context and removing alternative reinforcement increased responding in isolation and the combination produced greater-than-additive effects. Overall, the present findings demonstrate a consistent effect of removing alternative reinforcement on relapse that, under certain conditions, can be enhanced by context change.

Repeated resurgence with and without a context change

Resurgence is the reoccurrence of a target response when reinforcement for a more recently reinforced alternative response is eliminated or reduced. The present study arranged two successive three-phase procedures to assess whether resurgence decreases with repeated assessments. Moreover, we arranged a contextual change from the first to second assessment for some groups. Phase 1 reinforced a target response on a touchscreen computer with typically developing adults as participants according to either variable-ratio or variable-interval schedules of reinforcement. Phase 2 extinguished target responding and reinforced alternative responding. Phase 3 tested for resurgence by extinguishing alternative responding. Resurgence reliably occurred in all tests and decreased from the first to second exposure to the procedures but there were no effects of context change. Therefore, repeated exposures to resurgence tests reduced those effects but contextual changes had no effect.

A translational evaluation of renewal of inappropriate mealtime behavior.

The term renewal describes the recurrence of previously extinguished behavior that occurs when the intervention context changes. Renewal has important clinical relevance as a paradigm for studying treatment relapse because context changes are necessary for generalization and maintenance of most intervention outcomes. The effects of context changes are particularly important during intervention for pediatric feeding disorders because children eat in a variety of contexts, and extinction is an empirically supported and often necessary intervention. Therefore, we used an ABA arrangement to test for renewal during intervention with 3 children diagnosed with a feeding disorder. The A phase was functional reinforcement of inappropriate mealtime behavior in a simulated home setting with the child's caregiver as feeder, B was function-based extinction in a standard clinic setting with a therapist as feeder, and the return to the A phase was function-based extinction in a simulated home setting with caregiver as feeder. Returning to Context A resulted in renewal of inappropriate mealtime behavior across children, despite the caregivers' continued implementation of function-based extinction with high levels of integrity.

Uyarıcı-Tepki İzlerliği Bulunduğunda Bağlam Tekrarı Sıralı Uyumluluk Etkisini Değiştirmez

Sıralı Uyumluluk Etkisi (SUE) uyumlu denemelere kıyasla, uyumsuz denemeleri izleyen uyumluluk etkisinin daha düşük olması olarak tanımlanır. Bağlam tekrarının SUE üzerindeki etkisi iki deneyde incelenmiştir. İki deneyde de dört renkli Stroop görevi kullanılmıştır. Uyarıcılar iki kümeye ayrılmıştır. Birinci kümedeki uyarıcılar için uyarıcı ve bağlam arasında bir izlerlik yoktur. İkinci kümedeki uyarıcılar için ise bu türden bir izlerlik vardır. Bağlamsal özellik olarak, birinci deneyde büyük ve küçük harf, ikinci deneyde ise düz ve italik yazıtipi kullanılmıştır. Deney 1’de izlerliğin olmadığı kümedeki uyarıcılar için SUE gözlemlenmiş fakat bağlam değişiminin SUE üzerinde etkisi gözlemlenmemiştir. Kısaca, SUE hem bağlam tekrarı hem de bağlam değişimi koşullarında gözlemlenmiştir. Diğer bir deyişle, izlerlik farklı bir kümede (ikinci kümede) de olsa deney içinde izlerliğin bulunması bağlam değişiminin SUE üzerindeki etkisini kaldırmıştır. Deney 2’de ise izlerliğin bulunduğu küme için izlerlik daha güçlü hale getirilmiş ve birinci kümedeki uyarıcılar için sonuçlar tekrarlanmıştır. Bulgular, izlerlik bilgisi başka bir kümede dahi olsa, bağlam tekrarının SUE üzerindeki etkisinin ortadan kalktığını göstermektedir. Bu sonuçlar, uyarıcı, tepki ve bağlam bilgisini ve büyük olasılıkla kontrol parametrelerini de birleştiren olay temsillerinin, dinamik olarak kullanıldığını desteklemektedir.

Children's learning and memory of an interactive science lesson: Does the context matter?

Children often learn information in a context that is vastly different to the one in which they are asked to recall or use that information. Despite this, little is known about the effect of context change on children's recall of educational information. Here, 197 5- and 6-year-olds were taught the same interactive lesson in their classroom or on a field trip and were tested after a 1- to 2-day and 6-month delay. The effect of learning context was more pronounced for older children, wherein the field trip yielded more autobiographically rich memories than the classroom, but they learned a similar amount of scientific content in both contexts. Furthermore, especially for older children who learned in their classrooms, their autobiographical memory was predictive of the amount of scientific information they recalled. The opportunity to mentally reinstate the learning context generally facilitated children's recollection of autobiographical information, but older children were more adept at effectively utilizing the mental reinstatement prompt to retrieve scientific information. (PsycINFO Database Record

Making remembering more memorable

ABSTRACTMemory retrieval is a cognitive operation that itself can be remembered or forgotten, with potentially important consequences. To study memory for prior remembering, we had participants first study target words (e.g., bark) alongside semantically related cue words (e.g., dog). Then, on Test 1, participants retrieved targets in response to either the study cue or a changed cue that was semantically related to a homograph of the target (e.g., birch). Finally, on Test 2, participants retrieved all targets in response to the original study cues, and participants judged whether targets were previously retrieved on Test 1. As in previous research, cue change on Test 1 rendered target retrievals less memorable, suggesting context changes harm memory for prior remembering. We hypothesised that the negative effect of context change could be ameliorated by reminding participants of the original study cues during Test 1. We had participants either retrieve (Experiments 1 and 3, Ns = 46 and 62) or view (Experiment 2, N = 118) the study cue following each target retrieval. Reminding significantly reduced the negative effect of cue change, with self-generation being especially potent. This indicates that reminding can make remembering more memorable in the face of context change.

Sex differences in the generalization of fear as a function of retention intervals

In previous studies using male rodents, context change disrupted a fear response at a short, but not a long, retention interval. Here, we examined the effects of context changes on fear responses as a function of time in male and female rats. Males displayed context discrimination at all intervals, whereas females exhibited generalization by 5 d. Ovariectomized females with no hormone replacement displayed context discrimination at 5 d, whereas those receiving 17β-estradiol generalized their fear response to a neutral context. These results demonstrate that fear generalization for contextual cues occurs faster in female rats and is mediated, in part, by estrogens.

Improving memory after environmental context change: A strategy of “preinstatement”

A change in environmental context between study and test can produce detrimental effects on memory. For instance, when a change in the environment occurs after an event, memory for the event declines. However, the negative effects of context change can be eliminated when participants are provided with contextual cues. Here, we report that, as predicted by the Lehman-Malmberg model (Lehman & Malmberg Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 35(4):970, 2009, Psychological Review, 2012), participants can overcome a change in the environment by recalling the future test environment while studying, a strategy referred to as preinstatement.

Disentangling the effects of context change and context familiarity on Latent Inhibition with a Conditioned Taste Aversion procedure

Contextual specificity of Latent Inhibition (LI) has been demonstrated using an ample range of experimental procedures. Context dependence has not been consistently obtained, however, when LI has been induced using a Conditioned Taste Aversion (CTA) procedure. This paper presents two experiments designed to analyze whether the context plays the same role in LI with a CTA paradigm as compared to other Pavlovian techniques. Experiment 1 compared the effect on LI of a context change between the conditioning and test stages as a function of whether the testing context was new or the animals’ home cage. The results of this experiment showed that using the animals’ home cage as context at testing enhanced the expression of LI. Experiment 2 manipulated context novelty and familiarity beforehand to introduce different context changes. The results indicate that, as compared to the no context change condition, the strength of LI increased when the conditioning context was different from that of preexposure and testing (ABA). Conversely, a context change from preexposure to conditioning/test stages (ABB) disrupted LI, but only when the animals had been pre-familiarized with the new context introduced at conditioning. These results are similar to those obtained with other conditioning procedures different from CTA.

Age-related differences in recognition memory: Effects of materials and context change.

The study explored age-related differences in the effects of context change on recognition memory by presenting object names (Expt. 1A) or their pictures (Expt. 1B) on background scenes. Participants later attempted to recognize previously presented items on background scenes that were original, switched, blank, or new. Older adults recognized fewer word stimuli than did younger adults, and context effects were larger for older adults. With pictures, however, the age-related decrement was eliminated and context effects were reduced. The beneficial effect of context reinstatement in older adults occurs despite the finding that they are less able to recall or recognize such contexts (Experiment 2). Older adults can use context information in recognition memory at least as efficiently as younger adults when suitable materials and conditions are provided.

What is the difference? A cognitive dissimilarity measure for information retrieval result sets

Result rankings from context-aware information retrieval are inherently dynamic, as the same query can lead to significantly different outcomes in different contexts. For example, the search term Digital Camera will lead to different—albeit potentially overlapping—results in the contexts customer reviews and shops, respectively. The comparison of such result rankings can provide useful insights into the effects of context changes on the information retrieval results. In particular, the impact of single aspects of the context in complex applications can be analyzed to identify the most (and least) influential context parameters. While a multitude of methods exists for assessing the relevance of a result ranking with respect to a given query, the question how different two result rankings are from a user’s point of view has not been tackled so far. This paper introduces DIR, a cognitively plausible dissimilarity measure for information retrieval result sets that is based solely on the results and thus applicable independently of the retrieval method. Unlike statistical correlation measures, this dissimilarity measure reflects how human users quantify the changes in information retrieval result rankings. The DIR measure supports cognitive engineering tasks for information retrieval, such as work flow and interface design: using the measure, developers can identify which aspects of context heavily influence the outcome of the retrieval task and should therefore be in the focus of the user’s interaction with the system. The cognitive plausibility of DIR has been evaluated in two human participants tests, which demonstrate a strong correlation with user judgments.

Memorial Consequences of Environmental Context Change in Children and Adults

Changing environmental context during encoding can influence episodic memory. This study examined the memorial consequences of environmental context change in children. Kindergartners, first and fourth graders, and young adults studied two lists of items, either in the same room (no context change) or in two different rooms (context change), and subsequently were tested on the two lists in the room in which the second list was encoded. As expected, in adults, the context change impaired recall of the first list and improved recall of the second. Whereas fourth graders showed the same pattern of results as adults, in both kindergartners and first graders no memorial effects of the context change arose. The results indicate that the two effects of environmental context change develop contemporaneously over middle childhood and reach maturity at the end of the elementary school days. The findings are discussed in light of both retrieval-based and encoding-based accounts of context-dependent memory.

The role of context in the re-extinction of learned fear

Extinction of learned fear is both amygdala- and NMDA receptor (NMDAr)-dependent. Recent studies, however, have shown that extinction the second time (re-extinction) does not involve the amygdala and is NMDAr-independent. The present study compared the effects of context change on extinction and re-extinction in adult Sprague–Dawley rats. Experiment 1 showed that both extinction and re-extinction are context-specific with a renewal effect occurring in both cases. Experiment 2 then examined whether the transition from an NMDAr-dependent to an NMDAr-independent process was context-specific. As expected, the results showed that MK-801 (0.1 mg/kg) impaired initial extinction but did not impair re-extinction (i.e., re-extinction was found to be NMDAr-independent). A novel finding was that if re-extinction occurred in a context different from initial extinction, then MK-801 impaired re-extinction. In other words, re-extinction is NMDAr-dependent (i.e., like initial extinction) when it occurs in a different context to initial extinction. Therefore, the switch from NMDAr-dependent to NMDAr-independent extinction is both stimulus [Langton, J.M., Richardson, R. (2008). d-cycloserine facilitates extinction the first time but not the second time: An examination of the role of NMDA across the course of repeated extinction sessions. Neuropsychopharmacology, 33, 3096–3102.] and context-specific (the present study). The precise conditions that govern whether extinction requires NMDAr activation are of considerable theoretical interest and remain to be fully characterized.

From the Office to the Pub: The Role of Smoking-Relevant Contexts and Cue-Elicited Urge to Smoke

The present study investigates how environmental contexts can affect cue-elicited urge to smoke. A total of 33 smokers were repeatedly presented with a cue predicting smoking and a cue predicting no smoking in one room and the effect of context change in a different room was assessed. Results endorsed earlier findings that a cue predicting smoking availability elicited more urge to smoke than a cue predicting smoking unavailability. Furthermore, this study shows that a context switch from a low smoking-relevant room to a high smoking-relevant room reduces the learned differential urge responding between the two availability cues. These findings are discussed in relation to the role that smoking-relevant contexts play in the generalization of differential urge responding after a context switch. Furthermore, implications for government policies on smoking and clinical issues are discussed.

Return of experimentally induced chocolate craving after extinction in a different context: Divergence between craving for and expecting to eat chocolate

Unlike in fear conditioning, little attention has been devoted to extinction and renewal in appetitive conditioning, despite its relevance for extinction-based addiction treatments. We developed a paradigm, using a specific tray as a conditioned stimulus (CS) for eating chocolate (unconditioned stimulus, US), to investigate the effects of context change on acquisition and extinction of conditioned chocolate craving using an ABA renewal design. In Study 1 ( n=32), participants successfully acquired chocolate craving, but unlike what is commonly observed in fear conditioning, craving did not extinguish. In Study 2, we separately assessed craving and US expectancy in a between-subjects design ( n=64). US-expectancy data showed acquisition, extinction and renewal in the ABA group. The craving data did not follow this pattern, suggesting different mechanisms for craving and US expectancy. Similarities and differences between craving and US expectancy, as well as practical implications, are discussed.

The effects of context changes on the reinstatement of extinguished conditioned behavior in a conditioned suppression task with humans

Reinstatement refers to the return of previously extinguished conditioned responses to test trials of a conditional stimulus (CS) when presentations of the unconditional stimulus (US) alone are given following extinction. Four experiments were conducted to determine whether reinstatement could be found in a conditioned suppression task with humans and whether contextual changes can abolish it. Experiment 1 demonstrated the reinstatement of conditioned suppression when acquisition, extinction, US alone, and test trials were all given in the same context. Experiments 2 and 3 suggested that the reinstatement effect was still present when the US alone presentations were given in a different context to the subsequent test trials. Experiment 4 replicated this effect using additional controls over the amount of exposure to the various contexts. The results suggest that reinstatement can be robust across changing contexts. Aspects of the conditioned suppression task that promote the transfer of learning across contexts or the establishment of configural context-CS stimuli may underlie the apparent lack of contextual control over reinstatement.

Environmental context effects in conceptual explicit and implicit memory

Previous research has found environmental context effects for both conceptual explicit and conceptual implicit memory (Parker, Gellatly, & Waterman, 1999). The research presented here challenges these findings on methodological grounds. Experiment 1 assessed the effects of context change on category-exemplar generation (conceptual implicit memory test) and category-cued recall (conceptual explicit memory test). Experiment 2 assessed the effects of context change on word association (conceptual implicit memory test) and word associate cued recall (conceptual explicit memory test). In both experiments, study–test changes in environmental context were found to influence performance only on tests of explicit memory. It is concluded that when retrieval cues across explicit and implicit tests are matched, and the probability of explicit contamination is reduced, then only conceptual explicit test performance is reduced by study–test changes in environmental context.