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Past research showed that emotional contexts can impair recognition memory for the target item. Given that item‐context congruity may enhance recognition memory, the present study aims to examine the effect of the congruent emotional encoding contexts on recognition memory. Participants studied congruent word‐picture pairs (e.g., the word "cow" – a picture describing a cow) and incongruent word‐picture pairs (e.g., the word "cow" – a picture describing a goat) and, subsequently, were asked to report the nature of the picture (emotional or neutral). Behavioral results revealed that emotional contexts impaired source but not item recognition, with congruent word‐context mitigating this impairment and enhancing item recognition. Neural results from ERPs and theta oscillations found the recollection process, as shown by the LPC old/new effect and theta oscillations, for both item and source recognition across emotional contexts, irrespective of congruity. Meanwhile, the familiarity process as indexed by the FN400 old/new effect was found only for item recognition in congruent emotional contexts. These findings suggest that the congruent relationship of item‐context could mitigate the emotion‐induced source memory impairment and enhance item memory, with neural results elucidating the memory processes involved in retrieval of emotional information. Specifically, while emotion‐related information generally elicits the recollection‐based memory process, only congruent emotional information elicits the familiarity‐based process. Focusing on the semantically congruent connection between emotional context and item, the current study aims to investigate how it affects two types of recognition memory and their underlying neural substrates. The results showed that there were similar neural substrates between item memory and source memory, but significantly different effects of congruent emotional contexts on item memory and source memory performance were observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is widely accepted that familiarity could support associative recognition when the to‐be‐learn items are 'unitized' into a new representation, the effects of unitization on associative recognition and recollection remain much debated. The current study aimed to explain these debates by exploring when and how unitization benefits associative recognition using event‐related potentials (ERPs). During the encoding phase, participants learned compound words and unrelated word pairs (i.e., High vs. Low level of unitization). At retrieval, the compound words were rearranged into new compound words (i.e., no‐change) and unrelated word pairs (i.e., change). Similarly, the unrelated word pairs were rearranged into new unrelated word pairs (i.e., no‐change) and compound words (i.e., change). Results showed that under the no‐change condition, unitization did not affect associative recognition, nor its underlying processes. In contrast, under the change condition, unitization improved associative recognition by increasing both familiarity‐related FN400 effect and recollection‐related LPC effect. In addition, a planned comparison between the compound‐change and unrelated‐no change conditions—a common index for unitization effect in past studies—revealed that unitization could not only elicit significant FN400 effect, but also improve associative recognition by increasing LPC effect. Collectively, these results not only allowed to explain the current discrepancies in the literature concerning the effect of unitization on associative recognition, but also emphasized the importance of matching the level of unitization between the studied and rearranged word pairs. Although most studies have suggested enhanced familiarity‐based associative recognition when the to‐be‐learned items are unitized, the effects of unitization on associative recognition and recollection remain controversial. The current study aims to explain this controversy by manipulating the level of unitization within word pairs, both at encoding and when rearranged. Collectively, results could not only explain current discrepancies in the literature, but also emphasize the importance of matching the level of unitization between the studied and rearranged word pairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]