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Davies and Thomson, in their review of context effects in memory, begin by drawing our attention to the different meanings of the term 'context' and the various experimental paradigms used to study context effects in verbal and non-verbal memory. The applications of context effects in the eyewitness and education domain are highlighted. Importantly, the editors make it clear in the introduction that we still do not have an appropriate theory of context effects, which limits the extent to which context may be used as an explanatory concept. The classification system developed by the authors (see section titles below) represents an attempt to remedy this.
The first section of the book, 'Environmental context' (EC), illustrates the independent and interactive effects of environmental context in verbal memory (chapter by Smith) and face recognition (chapter by Davies).
Smith begins by describing environmental context effects in naturalistic situations, moving quickly on to context effects on recognition, the internal manipulation of EC imagery, EC as an organizational cue, and individual differences. In attempting to account for the discrepancy in the literature, he argues that it is important that EC information at encoding is not 'outshone' by better memory cues. The 'integration hypothesis' (context-dependent effects will occur when context and learning materials are integrated in memory) is also discussed here, and is frequently mentioned as an explanation for discrepancies in context effects elsewhere in the book.
Davies, in his chapter 'Faces and places', surveys the theoretical and empirical basis for context effects in face recognition. This review would be useful reading for undergraduate students as part of a memory course. The chapter looks at the various manipulations of context in studies of face recognition, from mood states to changing clothing and environmental cues, and it raises questions about the ecological validity of findings. While the chapters in the EC section do a good job in drawing our attention to discrepancies in the context literature, there could have been a more detailed discussion of the important differences between recognition memory for words and memory for events and faces, particularly in eyewitness situations.
Guenther (Chapter 4) examines mood-state-dependent retrieval (in list-learning experiments) and considers how far network activation models can account for context effects. Guenther addresses inconsistencies in the findings and shows how mood-biasing effects are determined by the experiment task. Importantly, she shows how demand characteristics of the experiment may have a greater impact than the subjects' real mood. Eich and Birnbaum, in the chapter that follows, describe an attempt to induce mood independent of drug (alcohol) action, with the hypothesis that memory performance is not only a function of objective similarity between study and test states (i.e. whether in both situations they thinWfeel they have alcohol). Unfortunately, the effects of subjective intoxication were small and the authors spend much time arguing that their experiment was not sufficiently sensitive to detect differences, only briefly mentioning the practical relevance of their findings.
The next section moves on to semantic context and includes a most thorough and competent review of linguistic context (context in language). Tiberghein argues that there can be a linguistic context effect when a piece of linguistic information occurring at a particular moment in discourse influences the understanding and integration of another later element of infor-01991 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.