Proximate Processing Mechanism Of Survival Advantage Of Memory: Evidence From Self-reference Process

Many reports have described memory survival advantage that requires participants to judge words according to their relevance to survival situation, eliciting better recall than obtained in other judgment tasks(e.g., moving, pleasantness, self-reference). However, different researcher has different opinion about proximate processing mechanism of survival advantage of memory(e.g., congruity effects, evolutionary hypothesis, item-specific and relational processing hypothesis).This paper used the memory lad paradigm to investigate the proximate processing mechanism of survival advantage of memory—self-reference processing.This study is consisted of three experiments. In the first experiment, it uses a within-subject design and discusses whether standard self-reference or modified self-reference had the same effect on memory. In the second experiment,Adopting a 2(survival process、standard self-reference process)×2(memory load condition、no memory load condition)within-subject design, we discuss whether memory survival advantage occurred in the condition of memory load. In the third experiment, we use a 2(survival process、standard self-reference process)×2(high memory load condition、low memory load condition)within-subject design and examine whether memory survival advantage occurred in different conditions of memory load.Using E-prime program on computer to record the RT 、accuracy and rating, and from statistic analysis and analysis of variance, the consequences turns out that a). The participants in the standard self-reference condition had better memory than in the modified self-reference condition. b). The memory survival advantage disappear in the memory load condition. c). The memory survival advantage didn’t occur in neither high memory load condition nor low memory load condition.