The Processing Mechanism Responsible For The Survival Advantage Of Memory

Survival advantage of memory refers to that the memory performance of survivalprocessing is better than other memory encoding conditions, such as pleasantness,moving, vacation scenario, self-reference, imagery, generation and intentionallearning, etc. Researches of this field have shown that congruity effects, stereotypeactivation and ancestral priorities cannot explain the survival advantage effect, and thesurvival processing is likely a unique encoding procedure. But there is also one study(Daniel J. Burns, Sarah A. Burns&Hwang,2011) indicating that the memoryadvantage of survival processing may result from its eliciting of both item-specificand relational processing.This study researched that, with increasing relational processing, whether thememory advantage of survival processing can be explained by the joint ofitem-specific and relational processing, and whether the memory advantage ofsurvival processing was sensitive to relational processing. The relational processingincluded vertical relational processing, horizontal relational processing and temporalrelational processing. In both experiment1and2, we selected the same category listand DRM list as experiment materials and adopted a2(processing conditions:survival, pleasantness)×2(the number of associated items:4,8)×2(vocabularytype: category list, DRM list) mixed factorial design. The difference betweenexperiment1and2was that the items which were chosen from the same list presentedin different way. In experiment1, the items were randomly presented, but notpresented in adjacent positions; in experiment2, the items were presented blocked. Inexperiment2, we continued to increase the relational processing on the basis ofexperiment1. The two experiments studied that, when the item-specific processingwas unchanged, with increasing vertical relational processing and horizontal relationalprocessing, whether the memory advantage of survival processing can be explainedby the joint of item-specific and relational processing, and whether the memoryadvantage of survival processing was sensitive to relational processing. In experiment3, we selected the ad hoc category list as experiment materials and adopted a2(processing conditions: survival, category sorting)×2(the number of categoryitems:4,12) between-subject design to study, when the item-specific processing was unchanged, with increasing temporal relational processing, whether the memoryadvantage of survival processing can be explained by the joint of item-specific andrelational processing, and whether the memory advantage of survival processing wassensitive to relational processing.Results of the three experiments indicated that:1The joint of item-specific and relational processing can not be used as themechanism of survival advantage of memory;2The survival advantage of memory is sensitive to the long-term, stable andsignificant relational processing (such as vertical relational processing and horizontalrelational processing); it is not sensitive to the temporary, unstable and potentialrelational processing (such as temporal relational processing);3The survival advantage of memory may partly explain relational processing, but therelational processing cannot explain all the memory advantage.