Pacheco, DanielSánchez Fibla, MartíDuff, ArminVerschure, Paul F. M. J.2020-03-022020-03-022017Pacheco D, Sánchez Fibla M, Duff AD, Verschure PFMJ. A spatial-context effect in recognition memory. Front Behav Neurosci. 2017;11:143. DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2017.001431662-5153http://hdl.handle.net/10230/43761We designed a novel experiment to investigate the modulation of human recognition memory by environmental context. Human participants were asked to navigate through a four-arm Virtual Reality (VR) maze in order to find and memorize discrete items presented at specific locations in the environment. They were later on tested on their ability to recognize items as previously presented or new. By manipulating the spatial position of half of the studied items during the testing phase of our experiment, we could assess differences in performance related to the congruency of environmental information at encoding and retrieval. Our results revealed that spatial context had a significant effect on the quality of memory. In particular, we found that recognition performance was significantly better in trials in which contextual information was congruent as opposed to those in which it was different. Our results are in line with previous studies that have reported spatial-context effects in recognition memory, further characterizing their magnitude under ecologically valid experimental conditions.application/pdfeng© 2017 Pacheco, Sánchez-Fibla, Duff and Verschure. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00143Recognition memorySpatial behaviorContext effectsSpatial memory and navigationVirtual realityinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess