A Transfer-Appropriate Processing Account of Context Effects in Word-Fragment Completion

The claim that priming on implicit memory tasks such as word-fragment completion is sensitive to context effects was tested by using homographs (e.g., board) to manipulate context. On the basis of previous findings, it was assumed that presentation of only the perceptual cue at test i_oa_d) should activate the dominant meaning, thereby creating the same context for homographs encoded for their dominant encoding and a different context for homographs encoded for their nondominant meaning. As expected, little or no effect of varying context was observed on a perceptual implicit task (Experiments 1-2B). When explicit retrieval instructions were given in Experiment 3, same-context encoding led to greater recall of homographs from word-fragment cues relative to different-context encoding. These results are consistent with the predictions of the transfer-appropriate-processing view because little advantage for the same-context condition was obtained in implicit tests in the absence of conceptual cues.