Does changing stimulus presentation modality influence the environmental context dependency of the word fragment task?

Abstract

The effect of environmental context on performance for the word fragment task is investigated by changing the stimulus presentation modality. In an encoding session, 40 to-be-remembered items were either visually or auditory presented to 48 participants. After 10 minutes, participants engaged in a visual word fragment task in either the same room as the encoding session or in a different room. Reinstatement of the environmental context facilitated performance for the word fragment task in the different presentation modality condition. However, in the same presentation modality condition, reinstatement of the environmental context did not affect performance. This result suggests that when the effects of item cues, such as word fragments, are reduced by changing the presentation modality between the encoding and test sessions, environmental context cues also facilitate performance in the word fragment task.