记忆的生存加工优势效应

The Survival Processing Advantages Effect of Memory

近年来,一些研究者使用生存加工范式来研究记忆,并发现了记忆的生存加工优势效应。本文首先介绍生存加工优势效应的含义及其研究范式,然后介绍生存加工优势产生的可能原因,即在长期的进化过程中,记忆的机制是为了解决人类祖先的适应性问题而设计的,因此产生记忆的生存加工优势效应。同时,还分析了记忆生存加工优势效应产生的其他可能原因以及对生存加工优势效应的争论。最后提出了今后需要进一步研究的问题。

According to the evolutionary psychologists, an evolved psychological mechanism exists in the form that it does because it solved a specific problem of survival or reproduction recurrently over evolutionary history. Recently, several groups of researchers reported the survival processing advantages of memory by using the survival processing paradigm. This survival recall advantage has been replicated with numerous control conditions, which intended to match the survival context in terms of novelty, arousal, and media exposure. Taken together, the findings of these studies seem to indicate that the survival-relevant processing resuhs in superior memorability. Firstly, the definition and research paradigm of the survival processing advantages effect were introduced in this article. In the original study of Nairue et al. （2007） using the survival processing paradigm, the participants were asked to rate lists of words on the basis of their relevance in one of these two scenarios ： survival in the grasslands of a foreign land （ survival scenario） or moving to a new home in a foreign land （moving scenario）. And in an additional condition, the participants were simply asked to rate the pleasantness of the words （ pleasantness scenario）. After the rating task, they were asked to proceed a distractor task. And finally, they were presented with a surprise free recall test. The results showed that the participants demonstrated superior memory for the words rated in a survival scenario. This finding suggests that our memory systems may be tuned to remember information that is relevant to survival during the long-term evolution process. Secondly, other possible proximate mechanisms and arguments relating to survival advantages were addressed. Most of the previous studies showed that the mnemonic advantage of survival processing was not merely attributed to any item-specific or schematic memory processing, and suggested that the advantage reflected an adaptive bias that was activated when participants rated the words in a survival scenario. However, Otgaar et al. ＇ s （2010） study showed that both true and false recalls were amplified by survival processing. Moreover, Burns et al. （2011 ） found that the congruity between target items and processing tasks might contribute, at least partly, to the mnemonic advantages typically produced by survival processing. Finally, several promising directions for further research were proposed ： 1 ） the effect of survival processing advantage should be replicated when possibl problematic properties of the materials were controlled and equated across conditions ; 2 ） researchers could find specific brain areas related to the advantage of survival processing, using fMRI technique; 3 ） in addition to survival, social exchange was another adaptive problem human ancestors involved. Therefore, the mnemonic advantage should be tested in the social exchange processing.