What is environmental context memory?

Environmental context memory is a concept in personal epistemology: You remember things better in the context where you learned them.

Example: You study a software architecture concept at your desk with coffee, lo-fi music, and two monitors. Three weeks later you're in a conference room whiteboarding with six people and you can't recall the pattern — only a vague sense that you knew it once. Back at your desk that evening, the concept surfaces immediately. The knowledge didn't leave. The retrieval context changed.

This concept is part of Phase 9 (Context Sensitivity) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for context sensitivity.