Recognition memory studies have reliably demonstrated the
word frequency effect (WFE), where low-frequency words are
more accurately recognized than high-frequency words. The
context noise account of WFE argues that pre-experimental
exposure to stimuli generates interference that compromises
high-frequency words more than low-frequency words.
Because the representations of the contexts associated with
more recent exposures are assumed to overlap more with the
representation of the study context, stimuli that have been seen
more recently are thought to generate the most interference.
We asked participants to log their daily email for two months.
Based on the participant’s email corpus, we constructed an
individualized study-test recognition memory task to
investigate the effect of recency. Results show that recency has
a graded effect on recognition memory that extends for at least
two months providing support for the context noise account.