Adaptive Memory: The Mnemonic Power of Survival-Based Generation

Four experiments investigated the mnemonic effects of generating survival situations. People were given target words and asked to generate survival situations involving that stimulus (e.g., DOOR: "I'm in a house that's on fire, and I can escape through the door"). No constraints...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition memory, and cognition, 2019-11, Vol.45 (11), p.1970-1982
Main Authors: Nairne, James S., Coverdale, Michelle E., Pandeirada, Josefa N. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adaptation, Psychological - physiology
Adjustment (to Environment)
Adult
Cognitive Processes
Decision making
Evolution
Experimental Psychology
Experiments
Female
Human
Humans
Imagination
Introductory Courses
Male
Memory
Mental Recall - physiology
Mnemonic Learning
Mnemonics
Pleasure - physiology
Problem Solving
Recall (Learning)
Recall (Psychology)
Retention
Retention (Psychology)
Self-Preservation
Stimuli
Studies
Survival - physiology
Survival analysis
Test Construction
Undergraduate Students
Vignettes
Young Adult
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Summary:Four experiments investigated the mnemonic effects of generating survival situations. People were given target words and asked to generate survival situations involving that stimulus (e.g., DOOR: "I'm in a house that's on fire, and I can escape through the door"). No constraints were placed on the generation process, other than that it must be survival-related and refer to the target stimulus. Following a series of these generation trials people were given a surprise retention test for the target words. Across four experiments the survival generation task produced significantly better retention than several deep processing controls including: (a) a pleasantness-rating task, (b) an autobiographical retrieval task, and (c) a task that required people to generate unusual uses for the target items. These results demonstrate the power of survival processing in a new way and provide diagnostic information about the proximate mechanisms that may underlie survival processing advantages. They also extend the generality of survival processing beyond the standard relevance-rating procedure that has been used in virtually all prior research.
ISSN:0278-7393
1939-1285
DOI:10.1037/xlm0000687