m I added more commonplace usage of the principle, cleared up the wording on the study of word pairs and the recall task, and also added mention of and the link to state-dependent memory.
The '''encoding specificity principle''' provides a framework for understanding how contextualthe context in which information is encoded affects [[memory]] and [[Recollection|recall]] of that information.<ref name="Tulving">{{cite journal|last=Tulving|first=Endel|author2=Donald Thomson|title=Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory|journal=Psychological Review|year=1973|volume=80|issue=5|pages=352–373|doi=10.1037/h0020071}}</ref> Consider the debate on whether taking an exam in the same classroom in which the material for the exam was encoded positively correlates with performance on said exam. The encoding specificity principle would suggest that it does; however, such ecological studies prove to have ethical complications. The principle, proposed by researchers Thomson and [[Tulving]], states that memory is most effective when information available at [[Encoding (memory)|encoding]] is also present at [[Retrieval cue|retrieval]]. TheIn principlea explainslaboratory whystudy, a subject presented with an unrelated word pair is able to recall a target word as part of an unrelated word pair at retrieval with much more accuracy when prompted with the unrelated word it was matched with at the time of encoding, than if presented with a semantically related word that was not available during the time of encoding.<ref name="Semantics revisited">{{cite journal|last=Hannon|first=Brenda|author2=Fergus Craik|title=Encoding specificity revisited: The role of semantics|journal=Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology|year=2001|volume=55|issue=3|pages=231–243|doi=10.1037/h0087369}}</ref> InDuring additiona recall task, people benefit equally from a weakly related cue word as from a strongly related cue word during a recall task, provided the weakly related word was present at encoding.<ref name="Alzheimers RI-48">{{cite journal|last=Adam|first=S.|coauthors=M. Van der Linden, A Ivanoiu, A.-C. Juillerat,S. Bechet, E. Salmon|title=Optimization of encoding specificity for the diagnosis of early AD: The RI-48 task|journal=Journal of Clinical and Experimental neuropsychology|year=2007|volume=29|issue=5|pages=477–487|doi=10.1080/13803390600775339}}</ref> Specific encoding operations determine what is to be stored, which in turn verifies which retrieval cues are effective in providing access to that which was stored.<ref name=Tulving /> This principle plays a significant role in both the concept of [[context-dependent memory]] and the context of [[state-dependent memory]].
