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Do Item-Context Bindings Distort Subsequent Memory for Details of the Source Context?

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Ryan O'Donnell¹ (ryanodonnell7@gmail.com), Alexa Tompary¹; ¹Drexel University

The context in which we learn new information can greatly shape the content of new episodic memories. However, how newly learned content alters our memory for details of the context itself is less clear. Theories of item-context binding suggest that context representations update as new items are studied and recalled, but these theories largely focus on how this updating facilitates recall of items bound to the context. We investigated the reverse: whether the details of a spatial context in memory are updated by the items bound to it. Participants studied items bound to 4 birds-eye-view scene contexts (e.g., apartment) with 4 subsections each (e.g., bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen). Participants associated items to each context by dragging them into the subsection they would most likely occur. Items were selected so that some subsections were schematically linked to items more frequently than others. At test, participants drew the studied contexts, and these drawings were evaluated for the number of details. Data from 49 participants was evaluated by a separate group of over 900 raters. Data revealed that scene subsections with more associated items were drawn with greater accuracy, as they included more scene details. Moreover, subsections with no associated items were occasionally absent from drawings entirely. The precision of subsection size estimates was also impacted by the frequency manipulation, but with unexpected variability that we plan to further investigate. Results suggests that memory for the details of a context can be distorted based on whether items are bound to it.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic