ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore the research surrounding the survival processing effect and will then consider potential applications of these findings to help facilitate the preservation of memory.
8.2 Survival processing
Nairne, Thompson and Pandeirada (2007) adopted a functional approach to the study of human memory, placing an emphasis away from exploring how our memory system works and instead focusing on why our memory functions the way
it does. This approach is founded upon the principle that our memory systems have been moulded by the process of natural selection (Nairne, 2005; Nairne & Pandeirada, 2010) and have been subject to the pressures of evolution and subsequently survival (since survival would increase the likelihood that these memory characteristics would be inherited by future generations). This rationale led Nairne et al. (2007) to explore the idea that our memory systems have adapted to achieve specific functions, particularly those associated with our survival. Thus, Nairne et al. (2007) set out to test the hypothesis that human memory may be specifically tuned to process and retain information that is relevant to our survival. To formally test this hypothesis, Nairne et al. (2007) conducted four experiments where different scenarios were manipulated during the study phase. Experiment 1 had a between participants design and each participant was assigned to either a Survival, Moving or Pleasantness scenario. In the Survival condition, participants were asked to imagine that they were stranded in a foreign grassland without any basic survival materials, and were informed they would need to find food and water in addition to protecting themselves from predators. In the Moving condition, participants were asked to imagine they were moving to a new home in a foreign land, and that they would need to locate a new residence and later move their belongings to the new home. In the Pleasantness condition, participants were simply asked to consider how pleasant they perceived each word item to be (e.g., a flower may be perceived more pleasant than a stone). All participants were shown 30 concrete nouns in turn and were asked to rate each item from 1-5 regarding their relevance to each scenario. After providing the rating judgments, participants were asked to complete a short distracter task and were then asked to perform a free recall task. The results of this experiment revealed that significantly more items were recalled when survival processing had been employed than in either the moving or pleasantness conditions. This finding was particularly interesting, as previous evidence has shown that rating an item with regards to its perceived pleasantness or relevance to moving would produce higher levels of recall, as both are effective deep encoding tasks (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Packman & Battig, 1978). Nairne et al. (2007) conducted a number of additional experiments to explore this initial finding and found further evidence of the survival processing effect in a within participants design (Experiment 2), in recognition memory (Experiment 3), and also higher levels of recall accuracy than self-referential encoding (Experiment 4). Collectively, the evidence presented by Nairne et al. (2007) suggested that processing items with regards to their survival properties is a particularly effective encoding mechanism that would benefit from further investigation.
