Effects of Changed Semantic Context on Recognition Memory

The effects of semantic context on noun recognition were investigated in three experiments Experiment I examined the effect of changed semantic interpretation at recognition by pairing nouns with the same adjectives for study and recognition or by pairing nouns with adjectives biasing one semantic interpretation for study and with adjectives biasing different semantic interpretations for recognition. Experiment II replicated Experiment I and included a noun-only recognition condition to control for the effects of disrupting the unity of adjective-noun pairs at recognition. In Experiment III the effect of adjective change per se was determined by including a condition in which the adjectives accompanying nouns at recognition differed from the study adjectives but biased the same semantic interpretations of the nouns. Changing the semantic reading of nouns at recognition depressed performance in all three experiments. The need for a model of recognition memory including both retrieval and decision processes was discussed