Context Size and Set Size Effects: The Relevance of Specific Cues When Searching Long-Term Memory

Retrieving the relevant information from our knowledge and experiences poses a challenging problem to our memory system. In this study, we explore how retrieval of specific pieces of information from long-term memory is affected by the number of items to be remembered and by the characteristics of retrieval cues. Specifically, we looked at whether an increased semantic similarity between cue and target improves recall and whether additional context cues aid retrieval depending on their features and specificity. Using a cued-recall task, we observed across three experiments that increasing the number of learned word pairs slowed reaction times (RTs) and reduced retrieval accuracy. This effect was modulated by context: set size effects did not extend across multiple, unrelated lists. Semantic similarity between cues and targets consistently facilitated retrieval, independent of set size. Experiment 2 revealed no effect of additional visual context cues on RTs, while Experiment 3 demonstrated that larger semantic contexts hindered recall, leading to slower RTs and lower accuracy compared to unrelated lists. These findings are consistent with predictions from a model of memory portraying retrieval as a sequential search through a semantic network.