Exercise Does Not Effect Context-dependent Episodic Memory

Memory has been shown to be strongly associated with the context in which it is encoded, suggesting that the context is central to the memory itself. However, the effect of exercise on context dependent object recognition is not fully known. We then set out to investigate the effect of exercise on context dependent object recognition. In Experiment 1 we showed that a context change reduced object recognition memory but did not significantly disrupt object recognition. In Experiment 2 we assessed whether exercise would the mitigate the effect of context change. We showed that exercise does not significantly improve object recognition nor did it mitigate the effect of context change on object recognition. These results suggest that a discrete context change can significantly disrupt retrieval of object recognition memory. Our results do not agree with the body of literature related to this topic, so further inquisition into these effects should be undertaken to confirm or refute the impact of exercise on contextual object recognition