When items become context: how retrieval questions shape memory

In context-dependent memory research, focal objects are by default ascribed to item whereas backgrounds are considered the context. Questioning this assumption, it was recently proposed that context is not encoded but only reconstructed. Any aspect of an event could thus become either item or context depending on the question asked. Here we provide evidence consistent with this hypothesis across six pre-registered experiments employing a context reinstatement paradigm. When the recognition memory test focused on background scenes, reinstating the original objects increased the rates of old responses to targets and lures. We further showed that this effect remained when background scenes were task-irrelevant, and objects task-relevant, at encoding. Finally, Experiments 4-6 showed that this effect can be found when objects are task-irrelevant at encoding, but that this effect depends on the size of the objects. Overall, these results support context is reconstructed rather than encoded, but that the perceptual properties of the stimuli can limit the effect of context on memory retrieval.