ABSTRACT
Historically, the status of context in theoretical analyses of learning and memory is like the setting for the staging of a play. Occasionally striking effects are produced, but almost always the setting serves as "background" for the real action in the drama. Similarly, it is well known that changes in context can alter performance in learning and memory tasks. Such observations, however, are usually assigned to the catch-all category of "generalization decrement," and context effects rarely are represented formally in theories. In many cases context is treated as just one of those variables that one has to "control for."
