Context-dependent memory and mood

This thesis examined the effects of affective state (mood) on context-dependent memory. In the so-called context-change paradigm, participants learn two lists of words, and their internal context is either changed or kept constant between the two lists. The usual finding in this paradigm is that participants remember fewer words from the first list, but more words from the second list when context is changed compared to when it is kept constant. To see whether these effects are influenced by affective state, participants from the normal student population were exposed to positive, neutral or negative affective pictures after an internal context-change procedure. Surprisingly, no effects of context on memory were found in any condition. A control experiment with the same internal context-change procedure, but using a neutral distraction task instead of a mood induction, again failed to replicate the usual effect of a change in context on memory. The question of whether affective states influence context-dependent memory is left open by these findings. Future studies investigating this phenomenon should take care to use context manipulations that induce clear and strong changes in context