Picturing survival memories: Enhanced memoryafter fitness-relevant processing occursfor verbal and visual stimuli

摘要

Recent studies have shown that processing words according to a survival scenario leads to superior reten-tion relative to control conditions. Here, we examined whether a survival recall advantage could be elicited byusing pictures. Furthermore, in Experiment 1, we were interested in whether survival processing also results inimproved memory for details. Undergraduates rated the relevance of pictures in a survival, moving, or pleasant-ness scenario and were subsequently given a surprise free recall test. We found that survival processing yieldedsuperior retention. We also found that distortions occurred more often in the survival condition than in thepleasantness condition. In Experiment 2, we directly compared the survival recall effect between pictures andwords. A comparable survival recall advantage was found for pictures and words. The present findings supportthe idea that memory is enhanced by processing information in terms of fitness value, yet at the same time, thepresent results suggest that this may increase the risk for memory distortions.