Global versus local: functional components of scene context effects in recall

Expectation for context is perhaps the most influential contributor to episodic memory. Although research has investigated the influence of functional components of scene context in perception, little is known about the independent contributions of these components to long-term episodic memory. In this investigation we find that different from perception, these components make substantially different contributions to memory. Namely, the global context component that binds objects to natural scenes is important at short study times, where a lack of global binding information appears to disrupt meaning extraction. Local context components that bind objects to each other within a scene (i.e., spatial and associative) are important for sustaining memory performance. Disrupted spatial information forces a longer visual search, which requires more study time for effective encoding. Lacking associative information has a detrimental effect on recall following short study times—effectively equating performance to short term memory. This has important theoretical implications.M.S.Includes bibliographical referencesby Kimele Persau