Document Type
Student Conference
Semester of Graduation
Spring 2026
Abstract
Determining which aspects of knowledge are relevant depends on current context and task demands. Familiar contexts may proactively reshape our brain’s knowledge repository to make context-appropriate information more accessible, increasing response selection speed. To test this, participants were asked to perform a word association task while imagining playing a game with a peer or child (contextualized conditions) or to produce short or creative responses (rule-based conditions). Participants were only assigned to only one of four conditions. We expected the context of playing a game with a peer or child would result in faster response times than making responses adhering to task rules. Our results showed response times in the contextualized conditions were faster than the rule-based conditions, with child-oriented responses being made faster short or creative responses. Individual responses were analyzed and were found to conform with context and task demands of their respective condition. The results suggest that familiar contexts prime contextually relevant responses, while unfamiliar tasks may rely on an explicit, iterative evaluation to select task-relevant responses.
Recommended Citation
Garcelon, M., West, S., & Cox, C. (2026). Relevant Responses are Retrieved Faster in Familiar Contexts. Retrieved from https://repository.lsu.edu/discover_dur/30
Awardee Name
Meghan Garcelon
Academic Major
Psychology
Project Mentor
Christopher Cox