Not sure it's the most researched, but you could perhaps argue that EC-related effects are the most interesting to study because they are quite hard to find, considering that the EC is supposed to incidental and unrelated. Failure to find EC effects can lead to theoretically interesting consequences.

A few references you may already know on the topic (especially the last one):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11495110

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20635301

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14681006

Thanks, Davide. I'd just read the Smith&Vela (2001) article yesterday and in a way that's what prompted me to post here. This meta-analysis (which is solely based on incidental EC studies) seems to suggest the opposite, i.e. that t this effect is actually quite robust, even challenging some past studies which have failed to observe any effects. I couldn't find a similar (relatively recent) meta-analysis on non-EC studies so that's why I was wondering whether most of the research has been carried out in this area. I'll have a read through the other two articles. (BTW. I'm not an expert in this field at all, am an undergrad student whose just started to research this topic :-)). Thanks again.

Hi Cimen Ekici. Perhaps you can use (make) a scienciometric analysis of published articles at the last x years in some of the international specialized bibliometric databases. Then use the NodeXL software (freeware) it works like a Excel plugin, this software gives you a nice feedback from your database.

Hi Cimen. It's easier to find effects on recall than recognition, and easier with global ECs (e.g., rooms) than with local ECs (e.g., word colour). Famously, there was a paper by Fernandez and Glenberg where they failed to find EC effects over several attempts.

Fernandez, A., and Glenberg, A.M. (1985). Changing environmental context

does not reliably affect memory. Memory and Cognition, 13, 333-345.

Thanks Miguel. Sounds very intersting and didn't know there was freeware that could do that. Will keep it in mind.

Thanks, Davide. Yes, the meta-analysis was based on global ECs only and I believe the Fernandez and Glenberg study was included in the analysis. I'm not that familiar with the study designs and paradigms typically used, so not sure I quite understand why F&G arrived at different results. I think the meta-analysis observed CE effects of changing rooms but this didn't apply to studies which used 'associate processing' as input. I'm not quite sure what that means so will probably do some more reading.