The interval between encoding and retrieval influences the environmental context dependency for a word-fragment completion task

Abstract

The effect of environmental context on performance on a word-fragment completion task, as an implicit memory task, was investigated by varying the retention interval between the encoding and retrieval sessions. In two experiments, 40 to-be-remembered items were presented incidentally to participants before they engaged in a word fragment task. The retention interval was one week in Experiment 1 and 10 minutes in Experiment 2. Except for an environmental context cue of odor, the environmental contexts of the encoding and retrieval sessions in both experiments were different. Reinstatement of the environmental context cue of odor facilitated performance in Experiment 1 only. This result suggests that when the effectiveness of item cues such as word fragments is reduced by a long retention interval, the environmental cues can facilitate performance in word-fragment task.