Task context and organization in free recall
Open accessAbstract
Prior work on organization in free recall has focused on the ways in which semantic and temporal information determine the order in which material is retrieved from memory. Tulving's theory of ecphory suggests that these organizational effects arise from the interaction of a retrieval cue with the contents of memory. Using the continual-distraction free-recall paradigm [Bjork, R. A., & Whitten, W. B. (1974). Recency-sensitive retrieval processes in long-term free recall. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 173-189] to minimize retrieval during the study period, we show that encoding task context can organize recall, suggesting that task-related information is part of the retrieval cue. We interpret these results in terms of the Context Maintenance and Retrieval model (CMR; [Polyn, S. M., Norman, K. A., & Kahana, M. J. (2009). A context maintenance and retrieval model of organizational processes in free recall. Psychological Review, 116 (1), 129-156]), in which an internal contextual representation, containing semantic, temporal, and source-related information, serves as the retrieval cue and organizes the retrieval of information from memory. We discuss these results in terms of the guided activation theory [Miller, E. K., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 167-202] of the role of prefrontal cortex in task performance, as well as the rich neuropsychological literature implicating prefrontal cortex in memory search (e.g., Schacter (1987). Memory, amnesia, and frontal lobe dysfunction. Psychobiology, 15, 21-36).
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Abrupt changes in stimulus features and/or task goals produce separation in memory.
“In particular, inducing abrupt changes in stimulus features and/or task goals creates separation in memory [19,23–25].”
From Does mental context drift or shift? (2017) · cites this paper as [23]
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- Authors
- Polyn, S. M., Norman, K. A., & Kahana, M. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Polyn, Sean M.
- Venue
- Neuropsychologia
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2009-09
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 2158-2163
- ISSN
- 0028-3932 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2697131
- OpenAlex
- W2137146301
- Cited by
- 92
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 2.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Neuropsychologia (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Princeton University
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (F32MH078513, R01MH055687, R01MH069456)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Keywords
- free recall, memory organization, task context, encoding context, prefrontal cortex, memory search, semantic organization, temporal organization, source memory
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Female, Humans, Judgment, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Reaction Time, Mental Recall, Time Factors, Recognition, Psychology, Young Adult
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