Effects of context on implicit and explicit lexical knowledge: an event-related potential study

Although much is known about how contextualized and decontextualized learning affects explicit lexical knowledge, how these learning conditions contribute to implicit lexical knowledge remains unclear. To address this problem, Korean high school students were instructed to learn 30 English words by reading meaningful passages (i.e., in context) and another 30 English words using a wordlist (i.e., out of context). Five weeks later, implicit lexical knowledge was gauged by reaction time and the N400 event-related brain potential component, and explicit lexical knowledge was assessed with an explicit behavioral measure. Results showed that neither learning type was superior to the other in terms of implicit lexical knowledge acquisition, whereas learning words out of context was more effective than learning words in context for establishing explicit lexical knowledge. These results suggest that the presence or absence of context may lead to dissociation in the development of implicit and explicit lexical knowledge.