The context reinstatement (CR) effect is the finding that target stimuli are better remembered when presented in the same context as during initial encoding, compared to a different context. It remains unclear, however, whether emotional features of the context affect this memory benefit. In two experiments, we investigated whether the anxiety-provoking nature of a context scene might influence the CR benefit to memory. During encoding, participants viewed target faces paired with scenes validated as either highly anxiety-provoking or not, half of which contained other faces embedded within the scene. During retrieval, target faces were presented again with either the same or a new context scene. In Experiment 1, the expected CR benefit was observed when the contexts were low-anxiety scenes or high-anxiety scenes without embedded faces. In contrast, the CR benefit was absent when the contexts were high-anxiety scenes containing embedded faces. In Experiment 2, to determine whether the presence of embedded faces or anxiety level of scenes drove the reduced CR effect, we included an additional context type: low-anxiety scenes with embedded faces. Once again, the CR benefit was absent only when the context scene was highly anxiety-provoking with embedded faces: reinstating this context type failed to benefit memory for targets. Results suggest that the benefit to target memory via reinstating a context depends critically on emotional characteristics of the reinstated context.
Social Anxiety Level Among Obese People and Factors That Influence Social Anxiety
