In the environmental context (EC)-dependent memory literature, it is not clear whether global EC studies can provide results and conclusions that can be generalized to local EC phenomena and vice-versa. So far, no systematic effort has been made to distinguish between the two types of EC. The main aim of this thesis is to determine whether global and local environmental context manipulations, as employed in the literature, affect free recall and recognition tests in a comparable manner. The first two experiments deal with issues of stimulus presentation and encoding instructions. Their results indicate that the most efficient manner to present stimulus words at encoding is to present words singly (as opposed to word pairs) and direct subjects to process them in an item specific (as opposed to relational) manner. In subsequent experiments, a modified version of the remember/know procedure (Tulving, 1985) is applied to distinguish between recollection and familiarity processes at retrieval. Analyses are presented both from the standard perspective and from the dual-process perspective. Experiments 3 and 4 tested recognition memory and employed a local EC manipulation. Experiment 5 also tested recognition memory, but employed a global EC manipulation. Experiment 6 tested free recall and employed a local EC manipulation. Finally, Experiments 7 and 8 tested free recall and employed a global EC manipulation. The pattern of results provided by all the experiments led to the conclusion that global EC experiments and local EC experiments produce substantially different outcomes and, consequently, generalizations from one type of study to the other should be treated with caution. Suggestions for further research stemming from these results are presented in Chapter 8.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:421645 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Markopoulos, Gerasimos |
| Publisher | Keele University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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