Numerous studies have shown that words judged for their relvance to a scenario of survival are remembered better than words from lists processed differently. Survival processing is even more effective than many mnemonic techniques. This has been interpreted as an evolutionary design feature of memory. It is argued that such a survival effect should be even more pronounced in remembering the context or source of the information. Two experiments used a source monitoring paradigm. Both studies did not find any evidence for enhanced context memory, thus questioning the evolutionary account of the survival processing effect. An alternative interpretation is discussed.
Anderson, J. R. (1991). Is human cognition adaptive? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 471-517. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00070801
Barrett, L., Dunbar, R., & Lycett, J. (2002). Human evolutionary psychology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bayen, U. J., Murnane, K., & Erdfelder, E. (1996). Source discrimination, item detection, and multinomial models of source monitoring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 197-215. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.22.1.197
Br?der, A., & Meiser, T. (2007). Measuring source memory. Zeitschrift für Psychologie/Journal of Psychology, 215, 52-60.
Buss, D. M. (1992). Mate preference mechanisms: Consequences for partner choice and intrasexual competition. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Hrsg.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. (pp. 249-266). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Buss, D. M. (2003). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Butler, A. C., Kang, S. H. K., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Congruity effects between materials and processing tasks in the survival processing paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 1477-1486. doi:10.1037/a0017024
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the social sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31, 187-276. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(89)90023-1
De Bruin, E. N. M., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (1999). Impression formation and cooperative behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 305-328. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199903/05)29:2/3 3.0.CO;2-R
Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (1999). The origins of sex differences in human behavior: Evolved dispositions versus social roles. American Psychologist, 54, 408-423. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.6.408
Flexser, A. J., & Tulving, E. (1978). Retrieval independence in recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 85, 153-171. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.85.3.153
Godden, D., & Baddeley, A. (1975). Context-dependent memory in two natural environments: On land and underwater. British Journal of Psychology, 66, 325-331. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1975.tb01468.x
Howe, M. L., & Derbish, M. H. (2010). On the susceptibility of adaptive memory to false memory illusions. Cognition, 115, 252-267. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.016
Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.114.1.3
Kang, S. H. K., McDermott, K. B., & Cohen, S. M. (2008). The mnemonic advantage of processing fitness-relevant information. Memory & Cognition, 36, 1151-1156. doi:10.3758/MC.36.6.1151
Kroneisen, M. (2010). On the nature of the survival processing effect. Unpublished Dissertation, Mannheim: University of Mannheim.
Kroneisen, M. & Erdfelder, E. (2011). On the plasticity of the survival processing effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 37, 1553-1562. doi:10.1037/a0024493
Meiser, T., & Br?der, A. (2002). Memory for multidimensional source information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 116-137. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.28.1.116
Murnane, K., & Bayen, U. J. (1996). An evaluation of empirical measures of source identification. Memory & Cognition, 24, 417-428. doi:10.3758/BF03200931
Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. (2008). Adaptive memory: Remembering with a stone-age brain. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 239-243. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00582.x
Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. (2011). Congruity effects in the survival processing paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 539-549. doi:10.1037/a0021960
Nairne, J. S., Pandeirada, J. N., & Thompson, S. R. (2008). Adaptive memory: The comparative value of survival processing. Psychological Science, 19, 176-180. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02064.x
Nairne, J. S., Thompson, S. R., & Pandeirada, J. N. (2007). Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 263-273. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.33.2.263
Nairne, J. S., Pandeirada, J. N., Smith, M. A., Grimaldi, P. J., & Bauernschmidt, A. (2010). Adaptive memory: Does survival processing enhance nenory for source? 51st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St Louis, 18-21 November 2010.
Otgaar, H., & Smeets, T. (2010). Adaptive memory: Survival processing increases both true and false memory in adults and children. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 1010-1016. doi:10.1037/a0019402
Otgaar, H., Smeets, T., & Van Bergen, S. (2010). Picturing survival memories: Enhanced memory after fitness-relevant processing occurs for verbal and visual stimuli. Memory & Cognition, 38, 23-28. doi:10.3758/MC.38.1.23
Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie, 45, 255-287.
Peeters, G., & Czapinski, J. (1990). Positivenegative asymmetry in evaluations: The distinction between affective and informational negativity effects. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European Review of Social Psychology. (Vol. 1, pp. 33-60). Chichester: Wiley.
Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: Norton & Co.
Shimamura, A. P., & Squire, L. R. (1987). A neuropsychological study of fact memory and source amnesia. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 464-473. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.13.3.464
Snodgrass, J. G., & Corwin, J. (1988). Pragmatics of measuring recognition memory: Applications to dementia and amnesia. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 34-50. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.117.1.34
Snodgrass, J. G., & Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory, 6, 174-215. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.6.2.174
Soderstrom, N. C., & McCabe, D. P. (2011). Are survival processing memory advantages based on ancestral priorities? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 564-569. doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0060-6
Spencer, W. D., & Raz, N. (1995). Differential effects of aging on memory for content and context: A meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, 10, 527-539. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.10.4.527
Weinstein, Y., Bugg, J. M., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). Can the survival recall advantage be explained by basic memory process? Memory & Cognition, 36, 913-919. doi:10.3758/MC.36.5.913
Wilkinson, L. & The Task Force on Statistical Inference (1999). Statistical methods in psychology journals: Guidelines and explanations. American Psychologist, 54, 594-604. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.8.594