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Abstract

Do the operating characteristics of memory continue to bear the imprints of ancestral selection pressures? Previous work in our laboratory has shown that human memory may be specially tuned to retain information processed in terms of its survival relevance. A few seconds of survival processing in an incidental learning context can produce recall levels greater than most, if not all, known encoding procedures. The current experiments further establish the power of survival processing by demonstrating survival processing advantages against an encoding procedure requiring a combination of individual-item and relational processing. Participants were asked to make either survival relevance decisions or pleasantness ratings about words in the same categorized list. Survival processing produced the best recall, despite the fact that pleasantness ratings of words in a categorized list has long been considered a “gold standard” for enhancing free recall. The results also help to rule out conventional interpretations of the survival advantage that appeal to enhanced relational or categorical processing.

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... As a result, natural selection has played a crucial role in shaping individuals' psychological structure, enabling them to remember experiences and enhance their ability to survive. Sensations and perceptions are naturally interpreted to create a response to difficult and stimulating environments [1][2][3][4]. Nairne and Pandeirada [3] propose that experiences are generationally remembered, integrated into an adaptive memory system. It has been documented that cultural ...
... Sensations and perceptions are naturally interpreted to create a response to difficult and stimulating environments [1][2][3][4]. Nairne and Pandeirada [3] propose that experiences are generationally remembered, integrated into an adaptive memory system. It has been documented that cultural ...
... Thus, employing network analysis methods, the reflections based on extensive ethnobotanical surveys agree with the core-periphery structure observed in this study [18,[28][29][30][31][32]. If the center-periphery structure is Our results indicate that some species are used more frequently than others, suggesting that the selection of medicinal plants is not a random process [1][2][3]. We observed how the core integrates herbaceous species (e.g., Baccharis trimera, B. articulata) and shrubs (e.g., Schinus molle, Blepharocalyx salicifolius, Scutia buxifolia) that are native and widely available in the environment, along with native species with limited availability (e.g., Stenachaenium sp.) and adventitious species that thrive under human intervention (e.g., Rosmarinus officinalis). ...
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Background Human evolution has granted upon an individual’s cognitive mechanisms necessary for remembering experiences, vital for both survival and reproduction. These experiences manifest into cultural traits, influencing human culture, particularly in healthcare and maintenance. Studies regarding medicinal plants and treatments are integral to the study of the medical botanical system. Pharmacopeias highlight the prevalence of specific species widely used, aligning with the “consensus within diversity theory” in evolutionary ethnobiology. Within the framework of this theory, we reflect on the results we’ve achieved in a priority area recognized by UNESCO for its biocultural significance, both locally and regionally. Methods This study integrated network analysis and qualitative methods to examine the botanical medical system of “Parque Regional Quebradas del Norte” in Rivera, Uruguay. Results Study results demonstrate a core-periphery structure, with a strongly interconnected core resistant to fragmentation, ensuring structural stability. Additionally, the presence of peripheral nodes throughout the system was identified, enhancing the resilience of the botanical medicinal system against potential disturbances. Conclusion The core species renowned for their versatility and multiple medicinal uses, treating less severe ailments effectively. Additionally, core plants serve as prototypes for innovations. Their extinction poses a threat to the system’s resilience. Conversely, peripheral plants, though vulnerable, offer possibilities for therapeutic innovations. In the face of environmental change, conservation efforts should prioritize species that are vulnerable to extinction, particularly within the core. Simultaneously, preserving knowledge associated with peripheral plants presents a bicultural conservation strategy, ensuring the botanical system’s robustness among evolving ecological conditions.
... Memory is often neglected in ethnobiological studies, but it plays a significant role in how people interact with nature. Studies in the scope of evolutionary psychology have suggested that people preferentially store adaptive information related to their survival and reproduction (Nairne et al. 2007;Nairne and Pandeirada 2008). Such a pattern may shape, for example, the composition of local pharmacopeias and a society's most valued plants. ...
... As human memory tends to privilege information that contributes to survival chances (see Nairne et al. 2007;Nairne and Pandeirada 2008), it has the greatest likelihood of being copied and shared. Therefore, memory biases that favor adaptive information may be intrinsically linked to the process of cultural transmission as it affects both biological and cultural fitness. ...
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We develop an integrative conceptual framework for addressing social-ecological systems across different spatial and temporal scales. Ethnobiologists study social-ecological systems through the lens of heterogeneous disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Despite the integrative ambitions of the field, ethnobiology often remains fragmented through research programs that emphasize different methods and scales. We propose a conceptual synthesis of three processes: (1) cognitive processing, (2) cultural transmission, and (3) biocultural evolution. We also discuss how social negotiation is embedded in them. By showing how these different processes interact across different spatial and temporal scales, we develop a framework for ethnobiological scholarship that can address complex dynamics in social-ecological systems.
... The theoretical scenario of adaptive memory considers that the human mind has been projected by selective pressures from ancestral environments to favor information that is relevant to survival and reproduction in memory (see Nairne et al. 2007Nairne et al. , 2009Nairne et al. , 2012Nairne and Pandeirada 2008), for example, especially remember a toxic plant or a predator. Thus, evolutionary ethnobiologists use adaptive memory as a starting point for understanding human cognition in nature (see Silva et al. 2017Silva et al. , 2019Moura et al. 2020). ...
... According to evolutionary psychologists, human memory was shaped by selective pressures from ancestral environments to favor important survival information (see Nairne et al. 2007Nairne et al. , 2009Nairne et al. , 2012Nairne and Pandeirada 2008). In this sense, if we have an innate psychological bias inherited from our ancestors to remember preferentially adaptive information, it is possible that this information will also become more shared. ...
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In this paper, we present the points of convergence between of adaptive memory and cultural attraction, and how these two approaches can help evolutionary ethnobiologists understand human cognition and behavior in relation to nature. In addition, we present empirical evidence of how the union of genetic, cultural and ecological factors can shape the human mind and behavior, aspects that are often dissociated by ethnobiologists. Thus, the present manuscript brings a holistic perspective on the subject, allowing theoretical contributions and opportunities for dialogue between the fields of adaptive memory, cultural attraction and evolutionary ethnobiology.
... Memory is often neglected in ethnobiological studies, but it plays a significant role in how people interact with nature. Studies in the scope of evolutionary psychology have suggested that people preferentially store adaptive information related to their survival and reproduction (Nairne et al. 2007;Nairne and Pandeirada 2008). Such a pattern may shape, for example, the composition of local pharmacopeias and a society's most valued plants. ...
... As human memory tends to privilege information that contributes to survival chances (see Nairne et al. 2007;Nairne and Pandeirada 2008), it has the greatest likelihood of being copied and shared. Therefore, memory biases that favor adaptive information may be intrinsically linked to the process of cultural transmission as it affects both biological and cultural fitness. ...
... In their studies, participants remembered words better in free recall as well as recognition tests when they had been processed in the context of an imaginary survival scenario during encoding than when they engaged in alternative mnemonic procedures. This memory enhancement by survival processing has been shown for various retention measures, different populations and when compared to other encoding tasks or schematically similar scenarios (Burns, Hart, Griffith, & Burns, 2013;Kang, McDermott, & Cohen, 2008;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008b;Nairne, Pandeirada, & Thompson, 2008;Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007;Weinstein, Bugg, & Roediger, 2008). ...
... By employing variations of this survival processing paradigm, it has been shown that the relative advantage of processing information in a survival context to induce long-term retention is a robust effect. It has been replicated in within-and between-subject designs (Burns et al., 2013;Nairne et al., 2007), different age groups , using alternative control scenarios as well as encoding procedures known to foster retention, like pleasantness ratings, imagery processing or announcement of the retention tests (Kang et al., 2008;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008b;Nairne et al., 2008). The survival processing effect was observed for different word and visual material (Nairne, VanArsdall, Pandeirada, & Blunt, 2012;Otgaar, Smeets, & van Bergen, 2010;Weinstein et al., 2008). ...
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The survival processing effect describes the phenomenon that memory for items is better after they have been processed in the context of a fitness-related survival scenario as compared to alternative processing contexts. In the present study, we examined whether the survival processing memory advantage translates to memory for the order of processed items. Across two serial-recall experiments, we replicated the survival processing effect for free recall but did not find an additional survival processing advantage for serial recall when we controlled serial recall performance for the total number of words recalled per person. Adjusted serial recall performance was not better in the survival processing condition when compared to a moving and a relational pleasantness processing condition (Experiment 1), even when processing of the relational order of stimuli was explicitly endorsed in the survival processing task (Experiment 2). This finding is in line with the idea that enhanced item-specific rather than enhanced relational processing of items underlies the survival processing effect. Moreover, our findings indicate that survival processing does not increase memory efficiency for temporal context information.
... That language and foraging are closely linked is clear, and the need for naming of the plant foods is especially interesting in the light of the indigenous taxonomy debate (Rosati, 2017;Bar-Yosef, 2017; but see also R. Klein, 2017). The human mind appears to encode the location of gatherable foods into spatial memory, and the capacity to remember was inherited and facilitated efficient gathering of plant foods (Krasnow, Truxaw, Gaulin, New, Ozono, et al., 2011;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). Interestingly the retention of gathering knowledge and skill which is relevant to survival appears more active in women, but can be acquired in men (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). ...
... The human mind appears to encode the location of gatherable foods into spatial memory, and the capacity to remember was inherited and facilitated efficient gathering of plant foods (Krasnow, Truxaw, Gaulin, New, Ozono, et al., 2011;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). Interestingly the retention of gathering knowledge and skill which is relevant to survival appears more active in women, but can be acquired in men (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). ...
... In prior work, abuse severity has been associated with both increased and decreased memory accuracy Goodman, Quas, & Ogle, 2010;Ogle et al., 2013). In the context of CSA, severe events may be more important to survival and to one's sense of self and thus better retained in autobiographical memory (Bower & Sivers, 1998;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). This trend, however, is not universal: In individuals who attempt to psychologically remove themselves from memories of painful events, more severe abuse may have detrimental effects on longterm memory accuracy . ...
... Severe abuse is associated with dissociation (Freyd, 1996) and cognitive avoidance of traumatic experi-ences (Epstein & Bottoms, 2002), which arguably decrease recollection (Goodman et al., 2016). Although severity of abuse could be associated with less accurate memory of CSA, growing evidence has indicated that, by and large, negative events of high arousal, especially when relevant to survival, which likely includes severe CSA, tend to be remembered particularly well McKinnon et al., 2015;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). ...
Article
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Tens of thousands of child sexual abuse (CSA) cases are reported to authorities annually. Although some of the child victims obtain psychological counseling or therapy, controversy exists about the potential consequences for the accuracy of victims’ memory of CSA, both in childhood and adulthood. Yet, delaying needed therapeutic intervention may have detrimental effects on the victims’ well-being and recovery. To address this controversy, this study examined whether psychological counseling during a CSA prosecution predicts accuracy or inaccuracy of long-term memory for CSA. Participants (N = 71) were CSA victims who took part in a longitudinal study of memory and legal involvement. Data regarding participants’ counseling attendance during the prosecution and details of their CSA cases were gathered throughout legal involvement and shortly thereafter (Time 1). Ten to 16 years later (Time 2), participants were questioned about a range of topics, including the alleged abuse. Time 1 counseling attendance significantly predicted more correct answers to abuse-related questions and (for corroborated cases) fewer overreporting responses at Time 2. Counseling was unrelated to underreporting responses. These results held even with other potential influences, such as abuse severity, victim–defendant relationship, posttraumatic stress disorder criteria met, testifying in the case, and delay, were statistically controlled. Although further research is needed, this study provides evidence that psychological counseling received by CSA victims during or shortly after prosecutions may improve later memory for abuse-related information.
... Our results are in line with previous research that the survival processing effect is a deeper form of encoding and storing information (Aslan & Bäuml, 2012;Kang et al., 2008;Kroneisen et al., 2013;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008;Nairne et al., 2007). The reliability cues suggested by grammatical devices such as evidentiality markers might not influence deeper processing like the survival processing effect. ...
Article
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Adaptive memory retains information that would increase survival chances and reproductive success, resulting in the survival processing effect. Less is known about whether the reliability of the information interacts with the survival processing effect. From an adaptive point, information from reliable sources should lead to better encoding of information, particularly in a survival context. In Turkish, specific linguistic components called evidentiality markers encode whether the information presented is firsthand (direct) or not (indirect), providing insight into source reliability. In two experiments, we examined the effect of evidentiality markers on recall across survival and nonsurvival (moving) contexts, predicting that the survival processing effect would be stronger for information marked with evidentiality markers indicating direct information. Results of both experiments yielded a robust survival processing effect, as the sentences processed for their relevance to survival were better remembered than those processed for their relevance to nonsurvival events. Yet the marker type did not affect retention, regardless of being tested as a between-or within-subject factor. Specifically, the survival processing effect persisted even with evidentiality markers indicating indirect information, which suggests that the processing of survival-related information may be privileged even if potentially unreliable. We discuss these results in the context of recent studies of the interaction of language with memory.
... . Various types of content bias have been identified (Stubbersfield, 2022): survival bias, a preference for content related to life and death or health (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008); social bias, a preference for content related to social interaction and social relationships between individuals (Mesoudi et al., 2006); emotional bias, a preference for content that arouses some emotion highly (Eriksson & Coultas, 2014;Heath et al., 2001;Nichols, 2002); stereotype consistency bias, a preference for content that matches stereotypes (Clark & Kashima, 2007;Kashima, 2000;Lyons & Kashima, 2006); and minimally counterintuitive (MCI) bias, a preference for content that minimally violates intuitive expectations, such as physical laws (Barrett & Nyhof, 2001;Boyer, 1994;Norenzayan et al., 2006). ...
Article
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This study aimed to investigate norm bias, a novel type of content bias, in cultural transmission. Using online vignettes with 106 participants, we investigated whether participants preferred normative information over social information. Following the method of Stubbersfield et al. (2015), we examined norm bias in three transmission phases: choose-to-receive, encode-and-retrieve, and choose-to-transmit. The results showed that normative bias was preferred over social bias in the choose-to-retrieve and choose-to-transit phases, but not in the encode-and-retrieve phase, suggesting that normative information may be more likely to be transmitted over social information.
... Although it is firstly obtained under non-attentional conditions, the threat superiority effect had been testified under attentional condition in other studies (Blanchette, 2006;Brosch & Sharma, 2005;Brown et al., 2010). Actually, compared with non-threatening stimuli, threatening objects were particularly effective at maintaining attention during visual search (Fox et al., 2007), and better remembered in the survival context than that in other contexts (Klein et al., 2002;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008;Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007). Our results further indicated that the threatening stimuli, regardless phylogenetic or ontogenetic, were processed under unattended condition. ...
... However, attempts to avoid thinking about negative experiences are often unsuccessful and can result in inability to stop thinking about them (Bomyea and Lang, 2016;Wegner, 1994Wegner, , 1997. Some research indicates that survival processing (i.e., thinking about experiences in terms of their connection to survival) improves memory for traumatic events (Nairne and Pandeirada, 2008;Peters et al., 2017). This suggests individuals with PTSD may have strong memories for such events. ...
Chapter
Autobiographical memory is memory about experiences significant to the self. Generally, as children develop, their autobiographical memories improve. However, a number of factors can affect or are related to development of children's and adolescents’ autobiographical memories. These include issues associated with socioemotional, physiological, and psychological health and well-being. For example, sensitive parent-child conversations and elaborative reminiscing about personal life events can improve children's memories for these events later. In addition, parent-child attachment affects how children attend to distressing events, which can enhance or impair encoding and later memory of them. The body's physiological response to traumatic experiences can help individuals remember and avoid similar experiences in the future. However, chronic stress can negatively affect the brain and the body's physiological stress response systems, resulting in problems such as hyperactivity in the amygdala, decreased hippocampal volume, and atypical cortisol responses to stress. Chronic stress and the resulting physiological changes are associated with mental illness, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which predict heightened or impaired memory and further repercussions on the brain and stress response systems. However, traumatic experiences and chronic stress do not always lead to mental illness and memory problems. A variety of interventions and behaviors, such as emotion regulation training, mindfulness training, and physical exercise can counter the negative effects of trauma. In this chapter, we will present research and theory on children's and adolescent's autobiographical memory and health, including factors that can improve or impair memory, and those related to resilience and recovery.
... Fear of snakes and the prevention of incest, for example, are considered universal psychological adaptations present in the human species (see Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004). A human memory adapted to especially remember information of importance to survival and reproduction represents another important psychological adaptation, known as adaptive memory (see Aslan & Bauml, 2012;Nairne et al., 2007;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008;Otgaar et al., 2010). ...
Article
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Human beings have an adaptive memory that adjusts to different threats in the environment; however, we know little about the factors that modulate this plasticity in memory. Using challenges related to disease threats as a research model, we investigated whether the regularity of occurrence and previous experience with diseases would be factors responsible for predicting memory performance. To test the hypothesis that information regarding diseases that affect with regularity over evolutionary time is better remembered, we grouped diseases into chronic and acute. To investigate the hypothesis that information about diseases that affect regularly in the current environment is better remembered, we grouped diseases into high-and low-incidence. Furthermore , to test the hypothesis that information about illnesses from previous experiences is better remembered, we grouped illnesses into experienced and unexperienced by the participants in this study. As an alternative hypothesis, we investigated whether the recall could be influenced by diseases that originated in ancestral environments or are simply explained by regularity and previous experience with diseases. For this purpose, we grouped the acute and chronic diseases into ancestral and modern. Information about illnesses was presented to university students through fictional stories, followed by an unexpected memory test to identify the best-remembered information. We found that information about diseases that affect regularly over evolutionary time (acute) and from previous experiences was remembered more, whereas ancestral and regular diseases in the current environment (high incidence) were remembered less. This was possibly because diseases that affect humans regularly over evolutionary time spawned greater earlier experiences, increasing people's perception of risk and facilitating its evoca-tion in memory. In addition, regular diseases in human evolutionary history may have generated greater selective pressure on memory, contributing to a better retention of information. Human beings have developed an adaptability to deal with different environmental adversities, favoring those challenges in memory that affect them regularly and from previous experiences and not necessarily those challenges that refer only to threats from ancestral environments.
... In the present study, participants' memory for important information may be attributable to the survival effect: enhanced memory when to-be-remembered items are rated for survival versus pleasantness (e.g., Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008;Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007), and this survival benefit has also been shown in older adults (Stillman, Coane, Profaci, Howard, & Howard, 2014;Yang, Lau, & Truong, 2014). Specifically, when studying a list of items to pack for a camping trip, it is imperative to remember important items like the tent, a tarp, and water while forgetting things like cards, soap, or a clock is relatively inconsequential. ...
Article
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Although older adults are often concerned about instances of forgetting, forgetting can be a useful feature of our memory system. Specifically, strategically forgetting less important information can benefit memory for goal-relevant information (i.e., responsible remembering and responsible forgetting). In two experiments, we presented younger and older adults with a list of words (either unrelated words or items to bring on a camping trip) with a cue indicating whether participants ("You") or their "Friend" was responsible for remembering each item. Results revealed that both younger and older adults engaged in responsible remembering and forgetting by better remembering items they were responsible for remembering, indicating a strategic utilization of their limited memory capacity. Additionally, regardless of age and the cue indicating who was responsible for remembering each item, participants used importance to guide the encoding and retrieval of information. Thus, people may be able to engage strategic cognitive mechanisms to maximize memory utility for important, goal-relevant information, and responsible forgetting can enhance memory utility in both younger and older adults by using importance to drive memory and reduce consequences for forgetting.
... Animacy effects are considered to constitute strong empirical evidence for the adaptive memory view, according to which memory was sculpted in the distant past to solve fitness-relevant problems such as finding food and water, protection from predators, or a partner with whom to reproduce (Nairne, 2010;Nairne et al., 2017a, b;Nairne & Coverdale, 2021;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008, 2010, 2016. The ultimate explanation of animacy effects in memory is that animates have a special relevance for an individual's fitness because they can be potential enemies, represent mating partners, or be dangerous animals or prey (Nairne et al., 2017a, b). ...
Article
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Animacy effects in memory correspond to the observation that animates (e.g., cow) are remembered better than inanimates (e.g., pencil). Although the ultimate explanation of these effects seems to be well-documented, clear evidence that would support one or other of the proximate explanations of animacy effects has proven difficult to obtain. Here, we focused on the richness-of-encoding account of animacy effects in memory, which assumes that animates are recalled better than inanimates because the former are encoded with many more distinct associations with other items (i.e., richer memory traces) than the latter. Our goal was to provide further evidence for this account by replicating and extending the analyses of Meinhardt, Bell, Buchner, and Röer (2020) showing that more ideas are generated in response to animate than inanimate words and, importantly, that this generation process mediates the better recall of animates over inanimates. In line with the richness-of-encoding account, we successfully replicated the finding that more ideas were produced in response to animates than inanimates. Even though there is some evidence that the generation of ideas mediates animacy effects in memory, we also report findings from reanalyses of previous studies (Bonin et al., Experimental Psychology, 62, 371–384, Bonin et al., 2015; Gelin et al., Memory, 25, 2–18, Gelin et al., 2017; Gelin et al., Memory, 27, 209–223, Gelin et al., 2019) which—although supporting mediation—show that the number of ideas generated in response to animate and inanimate words cannot reliably predict memory of these words when they are learned in different encoding contexts.
... Indeed, instances in which memory faculties prioritized stimuli with survival importance -irrespective of personal expertise with or present utility of the encoded information -are increasingly documented (e.g. animacy effects on episodic memory; Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008a;Nairne et al., 2017), and have been generalized to the domain of visual attention (e.g. attentional "tripwires" for predator detection; LoBue & DeLoache, 2008;New et al., 2007a). ...
... When these participants were subsequently given a surprise recall task of the nouns, their mnemonic performance outperformed other participants who rated those same items based on their relevancy to an imagined moving scenario in which one has simply moved to a foreign land and must complete moving-related goals (e.g., finding a home, transporting belongings) or those same words rated based on how pleasant particiapnts perceived them to be ( Figure 2). This so called survival processing effect has been well replicated (for recent meta-analyses, see Scofield et al., 2018;Tay et al., 2018) and results in even better recall performance than other processing tasks known to improve memory such as imagery, self-reference, generation, or simply intentional learning (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). Just as selective associations have been documented in oneday old rat pups (Gemberling & Domjan, 1982), the survival processing effect has similarly been documented in young children 4-12 years old (Aslan & Bäuml, 2012;Howe & Otgaar, 2013;Otgaar, Howe, Smeets, & Garner, 2014;Otgaar & Smeets, 2010). ...
Article
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Deeply rooted within the history of experimental psychology is the search for general laws of learning that hold across tasks and species. Central to this enterprise has been the notion of equipotentiality; that any two events have the same likelihood of being associated with one another as any other pair of events. Much work, generally summarized as ‘biological constraints on learning,’ has challenged this view, and demonstrates pre-existing relations between cues and outcomes, based on genes and prior experience, that influence potential associability. Learning theorists and comparative psychologists have thus recognized the need to consider how the evolutionary history as well as prior experience of the organism being studied influences its ability to learn about and navigate its environment. We suggest that current models of human memory, and human memory research in general, lack sufficient consideration of how human evolution has shaped human memory systems. We review several findings that suggest the human memory system preferentially processes information relevant to biological fitness, and highlight potential theoretical and applied benefits afforded by adopting this functionalist perspective.
... The effects of generating false information may work differently in CSA cases compared to non-sexual crimes, such as burglary or murder. Role-playing a traumatic event from the perspective of a victim may make it easier to remember the event (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). The severity of the crime may elicit 'survival processing', that is, the tendency to fixate on information for survival. ...
Article
The present study utilized simulated memory error and blame attributions to investigate the effects of variations in rehearsal on memory. Specifically, 222 undergraduates read a story about child sexual abuse (CSA) while role-playing as the main character. After reading the story, participants were prompted to blame different characters for the abuse (perpetrator, mother, self, or no one) and rehearse the story (to write out the story while incorporating their blame attributions or to write out the story without adding blame attributions), or not rehearse (to not write out the story). Due to prior research on simulated memory error and memory for CSA, we collected data on participant depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociative tendencies, emotion regulation strategies, and attachment orientation. After a 2-week delay, participants were asked to write out the entire story exactly as they had read it. We found that rehearsal resulted in fewer omission errors, and blame attribution predicted more omission errors. Cognitive reappraisal was associated with more commission errors and fewer omission errors. Males and participants with higher psychopathology scores also made more omission errors. There was also an interaction between different attachment systems when predicting commission errors.
... Furthermore, it was successfully replicated as part of the Open Science Collaboration project (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). In sum, survival processing seems to be one of the most efficient mnemonic procedures known so far (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008a; but see Klein, 2012). ...
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After imagining being stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land without any basic survival material and rating objects with respect to their relevance in this situation, participants show superior memory performance for these objects compared to a control scenario. A possible mechanism responsible for this memory advantage is the richness and distinctiveness with which information is encoded in the survival-scenario condition. When confronted with the unusual task of thinking about how an object can be used in a life-threatening context, participants will most likely consider both common and uncommon (i.e., novel) functions of this object. These ideas about potential functions may later serve as powerful retrieval cues that boost memory performance. We argue that objects differ in their potential to be used as novel, creative survival tools. Some objects may be low in functional fixedness, meaning that it is possible to use them in many different ways. Other objects, in contrast, may be high in functional fixedness, meaning that the possibilities to use them in non-standard ways is limited. We tested experimentally whether functional fixedness of objects moderates the strength of the survival-processing advantage compared to a moving control scenario. As predicted, we observed an interaction of the functional fixedness level with scenario type: The survival-processing memory advantage was more pronounced for objects low in functional fixedness compared to those high in functional fixedness. These results are in line with the richness-of-encoding explanation of the survival-processing advantage.
... [1,2] This advantage of animate over inanimate words has been well recorded in various memory measures such as free recall, [3,4] cued recall, [5,6] recognition memory, [3,6] and paired associate learning tasks. [6] The adaptive-functionalist view of memory [7,8] suggests that animacy advantages are seen because of an evolutionary bias. Since animate nature satisfies the role of both prey and predator, the animate knowledge was noted critical for survival on evolutionary lines. ...
Article
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Introduction: Animacy effects refer to the processing advantage of animate concepts over inanimate concepts, and this effect has been studied using episodic memory tasks. However, animacy effects in the context of novel word learning, specifically through fast mapping (FM) and explicit encoding (EE), remain under‑researched. Furthermore, the role of overnight consolidation of animate and inanimate novel words encoded through FM and EE remains unknown. Hence, the current study was undertaken to explore animacy effects in novel word learning through FM and EE and its modulation following overnight consolidation. Methods: Sixty‑four healthy adults learned 24 novel words through standard FM and EE tasks and completed a delayed recognition test on the day of encoding and on the following day. Results: Results revealed a reliable animacy effect on both days in the recognition rates, with FM encoded‑words reaching statistical significance. Of the encoding methods, EE was found to be superior than FM for novel word learning, but overnight consolidation leads to the decline of words encoded via EE alone. Overnight forgetting affected animate and inanimate words equally. Conclusion: The findings suggest the role of animacy in novel word learning tasks based on FM and EE. However, the data‑driven cues recommend that future studies should focus on forgetting rates of animate and inanimate words as the encoding advantage noted for animate words did not influence forgetting rates following overnight consolidation.
... In response to the adversities faced by our ancestors, humans have better developed mechanisms to learn and retain information related to survival and reproduction than information that is not relevant to our fitness [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. PLOS From this perspective, the term adaptive memory was proposed by Nairne, Thompson and Pandeirada [1] to describe the differential performance of the human mind in a survival situation. ...
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Throughout evolutionary history, humans have been exposed to a wide variety of diseases, some of which have serious and even lethal consequences. Memorizing medicinal plants for the treatment of serious diseases likely maximized the chances of survival and reproduction and was instrumental in the evolutionary success of our species. In the present study, we used the idea of adaptive memory to understand whether human memory evolved to recall information about medicinal plants for the treatment of serious diseases. We considered plant-disease pairs of words as units of information available in a medical system based on the use of medicinal plants. The pairs included in the categories of chronic infectious diseases and transmissible infectious diseases were considered to be of higher adaptive value, whereas those included in the category of common conditions were considered to be of lower adaptive value. Pairs grouped into the category of emerging and reemerging diseases were employed to investigate conformity bias; pairs belonging to the category esthetic uses were considered to be of little adaptive relevance and utilized as an experimental control. Our results revealed that plant-disease pairs associated with the category of common conditions, considered by us to be of lower severity and less adaptive relevance for humans, were better remembered and retained in the participants' memory. We believe that prior experience with common conditions and the frequency of these conditions in the population may have intensified the ability to remember the plant-disease pairs associated with this group of diseases.
... While other biases such as political and ideological biases of course play an important role in the transmission of narratives and in particular misinformation and false news online, this study focuses on those cognitive content biases which have been identified in previous research from within the fields of psychology and cognitive anthropology: an ecological survival information bias (Stubbersfield, et al., 2015), a social information bias (Mesoudi, Whiten, & Dunbar, 2006); an emotional bias (Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001;, a minimally counter-intuitive (MCI) bias (Boyer & Ramble, 2001), and a stereotype consistency bias (Kashima, 2000). Ecological survival information bias suggests that, as human memory has evolved to be 'tuned' towards encoding and recalling ecological information related to survival and fitness better than other forms of information, humans will be biased towards ecological information relevant to survival (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). While social information bias suggests that, as humans evolved greater intelligence in order to deal with complex social interactions they will be biased towards information related to social interaction (Mesoudi et al., 2006). ...
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... Can the promotion of formal education in human populations lead to a reduction in cultural traits that are associated with natural resource use? The ways in which content biases influence the dynamics of cultural traits in a population can be characterized by the intrinsic preferences of different groups when copying information, such as the preference for transmitting social information versus non-social information [60], the preference for transmitting information that evokes feelings of disgust [61], or the adaptive memory that forms when information is memorized [62,63]. Adaptive memory is a form of memory that has evolved to help individuals remember useful and relevant information during decision-making processes, where information that is more advantageous in terms of adaptation is more easily memorized and recalled. ...
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The interest in theoretical frameworks that improve our understanding of social-ecological systems is growing within the field of ethnobiology. Several evolutionary questions may underlie the relationships between people and the natural resources that are investigated in this field. A new branch of research, known as evolutionary ethnobiology (EE), focuses on these questions and has recently been formally conceptualized. The field of cultural evolution (CE) has significantly contributed to the development of this new field, and it has introduced the Darwinian concepts of variation, competition, and heredity to studies that focus on the dynamics of local knowledge. In this article, we introduce CE as an important theoretical framework for evolutionary ethnobiological research. We present the basic concepts and assumptions of CE, along with the adjustments that are necessary for its application in EE. We discuss different ethnobiological studies in the context of this new framework and the new opportunities for research that exist in this area. We also propose a dialog that includes our findings in the context of cultural evolution.
... It also seems that a threatening context can enhance certain types of processing and memory (Kang, McDermott, & Cohen, 2008;Kazanas & Altarriba, 2017;Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008, 2010Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007;Soderstrom & McCabe, 2011;Weinstein, Bugg, & Roediger, 2008) but see (Butler, Kang, & Roediger III, 2009). Furthermore, the greater the threat, the greater the memory advantage (Olds, Lanska, & Westerman, 2014). ...
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Cultural evolution theory proposes that information transmitted through social learning is not transmitted indiscriminately but is instead biased by heuristics and mechanisms which increase the likelihood that individuals will copy particular cultural traits based on their inherent properties (content biases) and copy the cultural traits of particular models, or under particular circumstances (context biases). Recent research suggests that content biases are as important, or more important, than context biases in the selection and faithful transmission of cultural traits. Here, evidence for biases for emotive, social, threat-related, stereotype consistent and counterintuitive content is reviewed, focusing on how these biases may operate across three phases of transmission: choose-to-receive, encode-and-retrieve, and choose-to-transmit. Support for some biases primarily functioning as biases of attention and memory, while others primarily function as biases of selection to share with others, and the implications for this in wider cultural evolution is discussed. Ultimately, a more consistent approach to examining content biases, and greater engagement with wider literature, is required for clear conclusions about their mechanism and potential differences across the three phases of transmission.
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The survival processing advantage is a mnemonic benefit resulting from processing items for their relevance to survival. One explanation of the survival processing advantage is the richness-of-encoding hypothesis: Survival processing enhances retention by generating ideas (elaborative and distinctive processing), increasing the number of retrieval cues. Without retrieval, encoding is futile. Hence, the present experiments varied retrieval conditions - via transfer appropriate processing (TAP) tasks - predicting that the survival processing advantage could be reversed. In Experiment 1a, reducing the transfer appropriateness of survival processing caused significantly lower recognition scores after survival processing than after processing of word associates. Experiment 1b replicated a survival processing advantage and found a survival processing disadvantage. In Experiment 2, survival processing was pitted against a gift desirability task and retrieval mode was varied. Survival processing yielded superior memory on a standard free recall test, but the survival processing advantage was eliminated when an unusual retrieval mode was encouraged. Results affirm the importance of context-dependent retrieval.
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Evolution of Learning and Memory Mechanisms is an exploration of laboratory and field research on the many ways that evolution has influenced learning and memory processes, such as associative learning, social learning, and spatial, working, and episodic memory systems. This volume features research by both outstanding early-career scientists as well as familiar luminaries in the field. Learning and memory in a broad range of animals are explored, including numerous species of invertebrates (insects, worms, sea hares), as well as fish, amphibians, birds, rodents, bears, and human and nonhuman primates. Contributors discuss how the behavioral, cognitive, and neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory have been influenced by evolutionary pressures. They also draw connections between learning and memory and the specific selective factors that shaped their evolution. Evolution of Learning and Memory Mechanisms should be a valuable resource for those working in the areas of experimental and comparative psychology, comparative cognition, brain–behavior evolution, and animal behavior.
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E. J. (John) Capaldi (1928–2020) made numerous contributions to experimental psychology in his long career at the University of Texas at Austin and Purdue University. He was a pioneer in the area of animal learning and cognition, known for his sequential theory of partial reinforcement extinction effects. His research in this area and in memory and counting phenomena was conducted for the most part with rats running in straight alley mazes under various sequences of trial outcomes (e.g., reward, nonreward, variations in reward size). John's other interests included the sequential theory applied to Pavlovian conditioning, evolutionary theory, and psychology of science. More generally, John was a scientist to the core who served as a role model to those who knew him. His career centered on the values of science and rigorous critical thinking based in empirical data, coupled with a curiosity and openness to different and new ideas in psychology.
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Recently, researchers have identified word animacy as a strong predictor of recall. In contrast, the method of loci is an ancient mnemonic technique which takes advantage of highly structured encoding and recall processes alongside a strong imagery component to create easily remembered “memory palaces.” The present experiments examine the combined effectiveness of these techniques: Experiment 1 (N = 154) demonstrates that the method of loci and word animacy have additive effects, while Experiment 2 (N = 200) demonstrates that the additive effect of animacy is likely related to both the animate nature of words themselves and animate imagery associated with them. These results have implications for hypotheses about the proximate mechanism of animacy effects (ruling out temporal order and imagery as explanations), implications regarding the nature of animacy (as being both static and dynamic), and practical implications for memory athletes and educational settings alike: The method of loci and use of animate imagery can be taught easily, and they produce high levels of recall.
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Most of the studies with a focus on pathways and biases of cultural transmission in different domains show that vertical transmission predominates over horizontal and oblique transmission, especially in traits linked to traditions and survival skills, such as local medicine. However, overestimation of the importance of vertical transmission has been an object of methodological criticism. Therefore, a statistical analysis with diachronic perspective may obtain more accurate results. The present study uses an eight-year time frame, as well as synchronous analysis, to study evolutionary aspects that guide the transmission pathways of a local medical system in northeast Brazil. We find that even with vertical transmission being predominant in the learning of information in this cultural domain, the evolutionary implications of this predominance may not be the same as that expected by the theory of cultural evolution. There is a substantial updating of knowledge through horizontal and oblique routes, guided primarily by a model-based bias on prestige and success, which is quite adaptive. Moreover, even when the information is passed vertically, the transmission is much more diffusive than conservative. Indeed, there is a small set of information that remains over time, known as a "structural core," but new information is aggregated continuously, preparing the system to adapt to new events. By analyzing the transmission routes of knowledge about medicinal plants, this study presents a new perspective on the evolutionary implications of cultural transmission.
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The aim of this article is to develop an integrative conceptual framework for addressing social-ecological systems across different spatial and temporal scales. Ethnobiologists study social-ecological systems through the lens of heterogeneous disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Despite the integrative ambitions of the field, ethnobiology often remains fragmented through research programs that emphasize different methods and scales. This article proposes a conceptual synthesis of three processes of (1) cognitive processing, (2) cultural transmission, and (3) biocultural evolution. We also discuss how social negotiation is embedded in them. By showing how these different processes interact across different spatial and temporal scales, the article develops a framework for ethnobiological scholarship that can address complex dynamics in social-ecological systems.
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Under cognitive load theory, time pressure/urgency-induced arousal is a major contributor to pupil dilation during cognition. However, pupillometric encoding studies have failed to consider the possible role of time pressure/urgency effects, instead often assuming that encoding dilations directly reflect encoding strength. To isolate possible encoding strength and time pressure effects, we manipulated levels of processing (deep vs. shallow) and response deadlines (speeded vs. unspeeded) during verbal recognition memory encoding. Rather than reflecting encoding strength, pupil dilation signaled time pressure and decision urgency, as indicated by four findings. First, dilation was greater for speeded than unspeeded trials, yet later recognition was similar. Second, within every combination of levels of processing and response deadline, slower individual decisions yielded increased dilations compared to quicker decisions. Third, even when encoding dilations during deep and shallow tasks were closely matched, later recognition remained markedly higher for the deep trials. Finally, within every combination of levels of processing and response deadline, dilation levels were similar for items subsequently recognized (hits) versus subsequently forgotten (misses). Taken together, our results support a time pressure/decision urgency account: instead of directly reflecting encoding efficacy, pupillary dilation mainly reflects the arousal induced by an increasingly urgent demand to process information. In the discussion section, we consider other possible paradigms during which arousal-based dilations may forecast subsequent memory outcomes, unlike here. Nonetheless, we emphasize that even in these situations, the proximal cause of dilation would be the time pressure or urgency of information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
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In this article, we present the central ideas of evolutionary psychology, and discuss how their assumptions can help ethnobiologists to understand the dynamic relationship between people and their environments. In this sense, investigating this relationship from an evolutionary perspective can bring new empirical evidence about human evolution, also contributing to both evolutionary psychology and evolutionary ethnobiology.
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Recent behavioral studies used a survival processing task to investigate our memory systems from an evolutionary perspective. These results showed a memory advantage for the words rated for their relevance to a survival scenario compared with the words processed under numerous other tasks. However, the proximate explanations for the survival processing effect were mainly investigated through the subsequent retention data. By using event-related potentials, the present study was aimed to explore the neurocognitive features when we perform the survival-relevance-rating task. We used a pleasantness rating task and a moving processing task as control conditions in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Our results showed a larger parietal P600 for the words processed in the survival task compared with those processed in the pleasantness task and the moving task, indicating more elaborative encoding were obtained for the words processed in the survival task. Furthermore, an attenuated N400 was observed for the survival-relevant words in the survival task, indicating the survival scenario could facilitate the retrieval of these survival-relevant words. More importantly, a larger right frontal P600 was also observed for these survival-relevant words. This component might reflect the cognitive processes when we attempt to use the objects at hand to solve the fitness-relevant problems which we are facing. The present study supports the elaborative encoding hypothesis, and found the right frontal cortex plays an important role when we perform the survival task.
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Consistent with an evolutionary perspective, memory may be enhanced when people are in precarious situations. Particularly, a survival processing effect (SPE) has been found whereby people have better memory for a list of items when the items are rated for their relevance in a grassland context that contains survival threats including predators, and the lack of food and water. In this article, we systematically review research that investigated the SPE to disentangle the contextual effects (e.g., grassland) from survival effects (e.g., presence of predators) on memory. A total of 56 articles (106 experiments) that reported findings relating to the SPE before January 2016 were identified and reviewed. Ten experiments assessed the contextual effect and 5 experiments assessed survival effects. Meta-analysis showed that both contextual and survival effects made medium contributions to improved memory, with survival effect having a greater overall effect compared to contextual effect. Based on a further qualitative review on the scenarios used in the experiments, we concluded that grassland contexts per se may have a weaker effect relative to the presence of survival threat in generating mnemonic advantage. The remaining articles consist of experiments that did not examine contextual or survival effects specifically. These set of findings support the notion that the improved memory for SPE largely stems from survival threat because of the lack of survival threat in the control conditions.
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Social isolation was examined to assess its potential influence on the survival processing effect, which shows that individuals are more likely to remember something when it is processed with regard to their survival. Participants imagined being stranded in the grasslands, going on a space mission, or moving to a foreign land while alone or with a group of friends and rated a list of words for their relevance to the assigned scenario. An incidental memory test showed the typical survival processing effect on recall memory, with a significant interaction showing that the effect occurred in the isolated condition but not in the group condition. A second experiment examined rates of recognition for an isolated and group condition for the grasslands and moving scenarios and found a marginally significant effect of isolation in addition to the typical survival processing effect. Further, in both experiments, the perceived isolation of the isolated and group survival grasslands scenarios was significantly higher than the other conditions. The results are discussed with regard to the self-reference effect and the object-function account of the survival processing effect.
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Recent research into cultural transmission suggests that humans are disposed to learn, remember, and transmit certain types of information more easily than others, and that any information that is passed between people will be subjected to cognitive selective pressures that alter the content and structure so as to make it maximally transmittable. This paper presents a review of emerging research on content biases in cultural evolution with relevance to the transmission of popular narratives. This is illustrated with content analysis of urban legends, which found that most exploited at least one known content bias, with emotional information and social information being the most frequent. We argue that the narratives do not succeed because of the transmission of adaptively relevant information but because of their exploitation of content biases in human cognition.
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Rating the relevance of words for survival in the grasslands of a foreign land often leads to a memory advantage. However, it is as yet unclear whether the survival processing effect generalizes to source memory. Here, we examined whether people have enhanced source memory for the survival context in which an item has been encountered. Participants were asked to make survival-based or moving-based decisions about items prior to a classical source memory test. A multinomial model was used to measure old–new discrimination, source memory, and guessing biases separately. We replicated the finding of a survival advantage in old–new recognition. Extending previous results, we also found a survival-processing advantage in source memory. These results are in line with the richness-of-encoding explanation of the survival processing advantage and with an adaptive perspective on memory.
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A growing body of literature has demonstrated that motivation influences cognitive processing. The breadth of these effects is extensive and span influences of reward, emotion, and other motivational processes across all cognitive domains. As examples, this scope includes studies of emotional memory, value-based attentional capture, emotion effects on semantic processing, reward-related biases in decision making, and the role of approach/avoidance motivation on cognitive scope. Additionally, other less common forms of motivation–cognition interactions, such as self-referential and motoric processing can also be considered instances of motivated cognition. Here I outline some of the evidence indicating the generality and pervasiveness of these motivation influences on cognition, and introduce the associated ‘research nexus’ at Collabra: Psychology.
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Interfering with the perceptual processing of a stimulus can improve memory. The perceptual-interference effect was investigated from the perspective of the item-specific/relational encoding distinction. This perspective suggests that perceptual interference enhances item-specific encoding but disrupts the encoding of relational and order information. The results of 6 experiments were largely consistent with this view. In Experiments 1 and 2, perceptual interference (a hypothesized item-specific manipulation) and list organization (a relational manipulation) both enhanced free recall but had opposite effects on a measure of relational processing (category clustering). Increasing list organization increased clustering, whereas perceptual interference decreased clustering. In addition, perceptual interference typically decreased memory for order. Finally, when order information was an important determinant of free recall, the perceptual-interference effect was eliminated or reversed. When reliance on order information was lessened, the perceptual-interference effect reemerged.
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The existence of multiple memory systems has been proposed in a number of areas, including cogni- tive psychology, neuropsychology, and the study of animal learning and memory. We examine whether the existence of such multiple systems seems likely on evolutionary grounds. Multiple sys- tems adapted to serve seemingly similar functions, which differ in important ways, are a common evolutionary outcome. The evolution of multiple memory systems requires memory systems to be specialized to such a degree that the functional problems each system handles cannot be handled by another system. We define this condition as functional incompatibility and show that it occurs for a number of the distinctions that have been proposed between memory systems. The distinction be- tween memory for song and memory for spatial locations in birds, and between incremental habit formation and memory for unique episodes in humans and other primates provide examples. Not all memory systems are highly specialized in function, however, and the conditions under which memory systems could evolve to serve a wide range of functions are also discussed. Memory is a function that permits animals and people to ac- quire, retain, and retrieve many different kinds of information. It allows them to take advantage of previous experience to help solve the multitude of problems with which their environment confronts them, such as how to recognize the familiar, predict events, return to particular places, and assess the consequences of behavior Recently the question has arisen as to whether the
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Investigated the determinants of intralist inhibition of 1 class of items, accompanied by facilitated recall of another class, in 2 single-trial free recall experiments with 96 undergraduates using the A + 2B paradigm. While the explanation of the effect is not clear, the findings have implications for interpretation of data in which some items are "strengthened," in relation to other items, as a consequence of their repeated occurrence in input lists, recall by Ss, or presentation by E as part-list retrieval cues. (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Two experiments with 210 university students investigated and integrated research from organizational and levels-of-processing perspectives. In Exp I, Ss were given incidental learning instructions that directed attention either to relational aspects of items in a list or to the individual items themselves or to both. This processing was either semantic or nonsemantic in nature. The typical levels-of-processing effect was observed with the semantic and nonsemantic tasks for both relational and individual-item processing. Free-recall and recognition performances were determined by the additive combination of relational processing and individual-item processing. Also, the 2 kinds of processing had functionally different effects on memory when clustering, recognition scores, and false alarms were examined. Relational processing apparently enhanced the formation of retrieval schemes, whereas individual-item processing seemed to facilitate discriminative processes. In Exp II, the relative importance of relational and individual-item processing was dependent on the saliency of the structure of the learning materials. It is argued that the distinction between these 2 types of processing should be considered in relation to the structure of the learning material and to the type of memory task. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 55(6) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2008-10705-001). The word case should have been deleted from the first sentence of the left-hand column of page 9. The sentence should read, "Here, self-reference produced recall almost identical to that found for the definition task."] A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Explored the utility of the distinction between individual item and relational information of category size effects in recall. Memory for events varies as a function of the number of events in a given class, but previous research from organization theory did not succeed in establishing a consistent function relating memory and category size. It is suggested that prior research can be systematized within a framework of relational and individual item processing. Relational processing refers to the encoding of similarities among events, and individual item processing refers to encoding of distinctive information for each event. Assuming the importance of both types of information for precise recall and that the type of information encoded will depend on category size and the S's attention to relational or distinctive features, predictions are derived concerning the interaction of orienting activity and category size. The predicted interaction was obtained in 2 experiments ( N = 96) that demonstrated that small categories are better recalled following relational processing, and large categories are better recalled following individual item processing. Additional dependent measures (clustering, category recall, items per category recall, and cued recall) provided highly consistent converging evidence for the proposed theoretical analysis. The general conclusion is that theories of memory must explain the paradoxical fact of the simultaneous importance of both similarity and difference. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Examines recently developed measures of clustering in free recall and shows them to vary with characteristics of recall unrelated to relative amounts of clustering. Previous measures were shown to vary with factors, E.g., number of categories recalled, the distribution of the total items recalled across categories, and total number of items recalled. For these reasons, comparisons between and within ss, as well as comparisons between experiments, are difficult. An adjusted ratio of clustering measure, which does not vary with irrelevant characteristics of recall, is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Conducted 10 experiments to evaluate the notion of "depth of processing" in human memory. Undergraduate Ss were asked questions concerning the physical, phonemic, or semantic characteristics of a long series of words; this initial question phase was followed by an unexpected retention test for the words. It was hypothesized that "deeper" (semantic) questions would take longer to answer and be associated with higher retention of the target words. These ideas were confirmed by the 1st 4 experiments. Exps V-X showed (a) it is the qualitative nature of a word's encoding which determines retention, not processing time as such; and (b) retention of words given positive and negative decisions was equalized when the encoding questions were equally salient or congruous for both types of decision. While "depth" (the qualitative nature of the encoding) serves a useful descriptive purpose, results are better described in terms of the degree of elaboration of the encoded trace. Finally, results have implications for an analysis of learning in terms of its constituent encoding operations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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S. B. Klein et al (see record 1990-03546-001) suggested that the literature on hypermnesia (improved recall across repeated tests) could be explained by reference to the item-specific–relational information distinction. Klein et al showed that conditions designed to promote individual-item processing produced more item gains across repeated tests, whereas conditions that induced relational processing resulted in fewer item losses across tests. Five experiments generally replicate the Klein et al results and provide evidence that item gains and losses can be used to index amount of individual-item and relational processing in a variety of experimental contexts. It is suggested that the item gain and loss measures of individual-item and relational processing may be more appropriate than the currently used measures in some experimental situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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This paper briefly reviews the evidence for multistore theories of memory and points out some difficulties with the approach. An alternative framework for human memory research is then outlined in terms of depth or levels of processing. Some current data and arguments are reexamined in the light of this alternative framework and implications for further research considered.
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Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) demonstrated a striking phenomenon: Words rated for relevance to a grasslands survival scenario were remembered better than identical words encoded under other deep processing conditions. Having replicated this effect using a novel set of words (Experiment 1), we contrasted the schematic processing and evolutionary accounts of the recall advantage (Experiment 2). Inconsistent with the schematic processing account, the grasslands survival scenario produced better recall than did a city survival scenario requiring comparable schematic processing. Recall in the grasslands scenario was unaffected by a self-reference manipulation. The findings are consistent with an evolutionary account that attributes the recall advantage to adaptive memory biases.
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Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) proposed that our memory systems serve an adaptive function and that they have evolved to help us remember fitness-relevant information. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that processing words according to their survival relevance resulted in better retention than did rating them for pleasantness, personal relevance, or relevance to moving to a new house. The aim of the present study was to examine whether the advantage of survival processing could be replicated, using a control condition that was designed to match the survival processing task in arousal, novelty, and media exposure--the relevance to planning a bank heist. We found that survival processing nonetheless yielded better retention on both a recall (Experiment 1) and a recognition (Experiment 2) test. This mnemonic advantage of survival processing was also obtained when words were rated for their relevance to a character depicted in a video clip (Experiment 3). Our findings provide additional evidence that the mnemonic benefit of survival processing is a robust phenomenon, and they also support the utility of adopting a functional perspective in investigating memory.
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Long-term memory for position was examined from the perspective of an immediate memory framework, the perturbation model of Estes (Estes, 1972; Lee & Estes, 1977, 1981). First, a simple version of the perturbation model is shown to provide a reasonable fit of previously reported long-term data (Nairne, 1990b), even though the perturbation idea was developed to explain the phenomena of immediate retention. Second, new results are reported that extend the application to multiple dimensions. Long-term memories for list and within-list position appear to mimic the classic patterns of immediate retention, in that both show bow-shaped serial position curves and error generalization gradients that are roughly symmetrical around the true serial position.
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The role of encoding conditions in producing hypermnesia (increased recall over successive trials) was examined by manipulating the availability of item-specific and relational information at encoding. Our findings demonstrate that encodings providing item-specific information (e.g., elaborative encodings) produce hypermnesia by facilitating the recovery of new items over trials, whereas encodings providing relational information (e.g., organizational encodings) produce hypermnesia by protecting against the loss of previously recalled items. Thus, the effects of encodings on hypermnesia may be understood by considering the type of trace information they make available.
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Recall is inversely related to the number of items sharing a cue. The limiting case of unique cue-target relationships supports extremely high levels of recall, particularly when the cue is self-generated. This fact is incongruous with the importance assigned to the construct of organization in memory theory. Further, self-generated unique cue-target relationships tend to be idiosyncratic, implying that the power of unique cues should be limited to cases of self-cued memory. The experiments presented here suggest a role for organization that reconciles the fact of unique cue effectiveness with the importance of organization to memory. Two new findings are reported: Unique cue production enhances target encoding; and general cues can access particular encodings. The data are further tribute to the importance of simultaneous organizational and distinctive processing and recommend a new perspective on the function of organization in memory.
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The multifactor account of the generation effect makes detailed predictions about the effects of generation on item-specific and relational encoding, predictions confirmed in four experiments using a multiple-test methodology. In pure-list designs with unrelated study items, generation produced more interest item gains (indexing greater item-specific processing) and more interest item losses (indexing less relational processing) relative to the read condition. In a mixed-list design, generation produced more gains but did not affect losses. With categorically-related study items, generation produced more gains but fewer losses (indicating enhanced relational encoding). Generation consistently produced hypermnesia whereas reading did so only for related study items. Also, a significant generation effect emerged on later tests under conditions (between-subjects design, unrelated study items) which typically yield no generation effect.
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The basic laboratory technique for studying distinctiveness effect in memory is the isolation paradigm, a simple test in which a list of items is presented for memorization. All items except one are similar in some way. The different item always occurs late in the list, to allow the similarity of the preceding items to establish a context. Subsequent memory for the different item is always better than for the similar items. In 1948, Jenkins and Postman offered the intuitive-differential attention explanation to account for this difference in memory, that an item is remembered because it catches the subject's attention by violating the established context, so leads the subject to devote additional processing to it. It is this additional processing that accounts for enhanced memory. Since 1948, succeeding theories have accepted and perpetuated their explanation. In fact, the isolation effect and the intuitive explanation have applied to most other memory phenomena that fall under the rubric of bizarreness, salience, and novelty. The contributors to this volume argue that the intuitive-differential attention explanation and theories following from it are incorrect. The purpose of the volume is to test these currently accepted theories by contrasting them with the results of current research on the processes supporting them. The result is a much needed restructuring of the theories.
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Research on distinctiveness and memory has largely focused on explicit, or recollective, aspects of memory. However, memory also affects behavior in ways unaccompanied by conscious recollection. This chapter discusses research on distinctiveness and implicit memory within the framework of item-specific processing and relational processing. It begins with a brief overview of implicit and explicit memory, describes the utility of the item-specific-relational framework, and reviews recent empirical results supporting this analysis. Traditional memory tests, such as recognition and free or cued recall, require the participant to think about some prior event and report on it. Such tests are referred to as explicit memory tests and may be contrasted with tests of unintentional or incidental retrieval, known as implicit memory tests. Memory for prior events is inferred from the increased ease in identifying, completing, generating, or otherwise processing previously experienced information. This enhanced performance is known as priming. Experimental manipulations produce dissociations between priming and performance on explicit tests. These are referred to as functional dissociations, and a large number have been documented.
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Researchers are not in complete agreement on the matter of defining distinctiveness. Traditional definitions of distinctiveness point to the processing of non-overlapping attributes or features. Presumably, encoding of unique or item-specific attributes facilitates retention by increasing the discriminability of the item during retrieval. This definition essentially equates distinctiveness with the encoding of differences. More recently, however, some have come to view distinctiveness as the encoding of itemspecific attributes in the context of relational cues. This latter definition implies that the distinctive benefits of item-specific processing will emerge only when they are encoded in the context of relational cues. Hence, the former definition assumes that distinctiveness results directly from item-specific processing or difference encoding, whereas the latter view suggests that distinctiveness is the combined result of item-specific and relational processing. This chapter discusses the current state of affairs regarding measures of item-specific and relational processing.
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The concepts of organization and distinctiveness are considered important to memory. Yet, examination of research related to these concepts reveals conceptual inconsistency and confusion. We suggest that the problem can be traced to the use of similarity and difference as explanations and further suggest that adoption of a theory of similarity judgment as the description of encoding ameliorates the problem. The approach is illustrated by showing that Medin, Goldstone, and Gentner′s (Psychological Review, in press) theory of similarity judgment allows simultaneous organizational and distinctive processing. Reinstatement of these processes at retrieval produces unique convergence on a particular item and completes the description of the simultaneous importance of relational and distinctive processing of a particular item. The idea is applied to research directly related to organization and distinctiveness, and to the less obviously related phenomena of hypermnesia, generation effectsm, proactive interference, prose recall, and self-referent encoding.
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S. B. Klein et al (see record 1990-03546-001 ) suggested that the literature on hypermnesia (improved recall across repeated tests) could be explained by reference to the item-specific–relational information distinction. Klein et al showed that conditions designed to promote individual-item processing produced more item gains across repeated tests, whereas conditions that induced relational processing resulted in fewer item losses across tests. Five experiments generally replicate the Klein et al results and provide evidence that item gains and losses can be used to index amount of individual-item and relational processing in a variety of experimental contexts. It is suggested that the item gain and loss measures of individual-item and relational processing may be more appropriate than the currently used measures in some experimental situations.
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The Battig and Montague (1969) category norms have been an invaluable tool for researchers in many fields, with a recent literature search revealing their use in over 1600 projects published in more than 200 different journals. Since 1969, numerous changes have occurred culturally that warrant the collection of new normative data. For instance, in the mid-1960s, the waltz was a popular dance, and undergraduates wore rubbers on their feet. To meet the need for updated norms, we report an expanded version of the Battig and Montague (1969) norms, based on responses from three different sites varying in geographical locations within the United States. The norms were expanded to include new categories (e.g., ad hoc categories) and new measures, most notably latencies for the generated responses. Analyses demonstrated high levels of geographical stability across the new sites, with lower and more variable levels of generational stability between the Battig and Montague norms and the current norms.
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Reports an error in "The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes" by Stanley B. Klein and Judith Loftus ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1988[Jul], Vol 55[1], 5-11). The word case should have been deleted from the first sentence of the left-hand column of page 9. The sentence should read, "Here, self-reference produced recall almost identical to that found for the definition task." (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1988-28556-001.) A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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One of the benefits of working in applied settings is that problems tend to be well defined. It is relatively easy to measure progress, and analytical techniques can be objectively evaluated. For the laboratory researcher, however, problems are often ill defined. There can be no clear starting point, well-stated goal, or simple way of evaluating or marking progress. Consider the study of pure memory, an enterprise widely pursued by researchers in cognitive psychology. Most memory researchers focus on a particular memory system or process, such as episodic, semantic, or implicit memory, and they conduct experiments to (a) isolate its underlying mechanisms and (b) determine its parameters of operation. The goal is to analyze the system's structure and its component parts in much the same way that a chemist might analyze a chemical compound by breaking it down into simpler elements. Attention is rarely given to the system's function at this point, largely because understanding function is presumed to depend on understanding structure. After all, how can we determine the function of a system unless we first understand the system itself? It is necessary to isolate the critical components, along with some rules for their interaction, and then--perhaps--the adaptive role that the system plays in cognition can be specified. In this chapter, I discuss some of the implications of this widely practiced structuralist, or nonfunctional, approach to the analysis of memory. To begin, as noted above, problems crafted within a structuralist framework tend to be ill defined. When we set out to study implicit memory, it is difficult to gauge progress, or measure success, because the objective is unclear. The components of an implicit memory system are unknown; consequently, there is no way of determining when, or if, the system has been fully described. Researchers often end up studying tasks as a result, such as paired-associate learning or word-fragment completion, because task performance is easy to evaluate objectively. The trouble with this focus, however, is that the link between the studied tasks and the true memory system of interest can be tenuous or, more likely, inadequately specified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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If memory evolved, sculpted by the processes of natural selection, then its operating characteristics likely bear the "footprints" of ancestral selection pressures. Psychologists rarely consider this possibility and generally ignore functional questions in their attempt to understand how human memory works. We propose that memory evolved to enhance reproductive fitness and, accordingly, its systems are tuned to retain information that is fitness-relevant. We present evidence consistent with this proposal, namely that processing information for its survival relevance leads to superior long-term retention--better, in fact, than most known memory-enhancement techniques. Even if one remains skeptical about evolutionary analyses, adopting a functional perspective can lead to the generation of new research ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Mealey, Daood, and Krage (1996) reported that faces associated with an episode of cheating were better recognized than faces associated with irrelevant behavior, which, in turn, were recognized better than faces associated with an episode of trustworthiness. This pattern of findings was interpreted in favor of the social contract theory, which postulates that humans are equipped with brain mechanisms specialized in detecting cheaters in social interactions. We explicate a number of problems with the original findings and in this article report a series of three experiments designed to replicate the original findings under conditions that take those problems into account. Consistent across all experiments, old–new recognition for faces associated with a history of cheating was not better than recognition for faces associated with a history of trustworthiness. The present findings cast doubt as to the validity and interpretation of the findings reported by Mealey et al.
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The evolution of reciprocal altruism probably involved the evolution of mechanisms to detect cheating and remember cheaters. In a well-known study, Mealey, Daood, and Krage (1996) observed that participants had enhanced memory for faces that had previously been associated with descriptions of acts of cheating. There were, however, problems with the descriptions that were used in that study. We sought to replicate and extend the findings of Mealey and colleagues by using more controlled descriptions and by examining the possibility of enhanced altruist recognition. We also examined whether individual differences in cheating tendencies were related to cheater and altruist recognition. In the first experiment, 164 undergraduates saw 40 faces that were paired with character descriptions representing the categories of cheater, trustworthy, altruist, or neutral, for individuals who had either low or high social status. One week later participants reported which faces they recognized from the previous week (among 80 faces). Overall, the results failed to replicate the findings of Mealey and her colleagues, as there was no enhanced memory for cheaters. In addition, there was no enhanced memory for altruists, and no effect of participants’ cheating tendencies. A second experiment using a slightly different methodology produced similar results, with some evidence for enhanced memory for altruists.
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The Ss learned, on a single trial, lists of words belonging to explicitly designated conceptual categories. Lists varied in terms of length (12, 24, and 48 words) and number of words per category (1, 2, and 4). Immediate recall was tested either in presence or absence of category names as retrieval cues. Cued recall was higher than noncued recall, the difference varying directly with list length and inversely with number of items per category. This finding was interpreted as indicating that sufficiently intact memory traces of many words not recalled under the noncued recall conditions were available in the memory storage, but not accessible for retrieval. Further analysis of the data in terms of recall of categories and recall of words within recalled categories suggested two independent retrieval processes, one concerned with the accessibility of higher-order memory units, the other with accessibility of items within higher-order units.
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This paper develops the argument that many factors affecting retention can be understood in the context of a distinction between relational and individual-item processing. Relational processing refers to the encoding of similarities among a class of events and individual-item processing refers to encoding of item-specific information. Both forms of information are assumed to be important in retention, and the empirical argument for the distinction rests in part upon the reported demonstration of superior recall when both types of information are encoded. The experiments also demonstrate that variables influencing the type of processing, such as orienting instructions and the type of material, produce differential effects upon certain dependent measures. Thus, the data indicate facilitation of recall from the combination of relational and item-specific information, and further suggest the viability of a distinction between them because of differential effects of the two forms of processing upon recognition, clustering, and the relative recall of typical and atypical category instances.
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Biological evolution is a fact--but the many conflicting theories of evolution remain controversial even today. In 1966, simple Darwinism, which holds that evolution functions primarily at the level of the individual organism, was threatened by opposing concepts such as group selection, a popular idea stating that evolution acts to select entire species rather than individuals. George Williams's famous argument in favor of the Darwinists struck a powerful blow to those in opposing camps. His Adaptation and Natural Selection, now a classic of science literature, is a thorough and convincing essay in defense of Darwinism; its suggestions for developing effective principles for dealing with the evolution debate and its relevance to many fields outside biology ensure the timelessness of this critical work.
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Availability of human memories for specific items shows reliable relationships to frequency, recency, and pattern of prior exposures to the item. These relationships have defied a systematic theoretical treatment. A number of environmental sources (New York Times, parental speech, electronic mail) are examined to show that the probability that a memory will be needed also shows reliable relationships to frequency, recency, and pattern of prior exposures. Moreover, the environmental relationships are the same as the memory relationships. It is argued that human memory has the form it does because it is adapted to these environmental relationships. Models for both the environment and human memory are described. Among the memory phenomena addressed are the practice function, the retention function, the effect of spacing of practice, and the relationship between degree of practice and retention.
Article
In two experiments, the trade-off and the redundancy hypotheses for relational and item-specific information proposed by Hunt and Seta (1984) were tested. Lists consisting of categories of varying sizes were presented under categorising instructions and under pleasantness-rating instructions. Memory was tested in free recall and a recognition test. Different measures were used for relational and item-specific information. According to the trade-off hypothesis, the amount of relational information should increase with increasing category size, and at the same time, the amount of item-specific information should decrease. This hypothesis could not be confirmed. Whereas the amount of relational information increased with increasing category size, the amount of item-specific information did not decrease. The redundancy hypothesis assumes that relational and item-specific information depend on category size only if the relevant information is not provided otherwise, as by orienting tasks. This hypothesis could not be conformed either. Rather, relational encoding is supplemented when both orienting task and the list structure focus encoding of that type of information. Item-specific encoding, on the other hand, is independent of category size and increases when the instruction focuses on it. The findings of free recall show that free recall is determined by more than the interplay of relational and item-specific information in an additive manner.
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Interfering with the perceptual processing of a stimulus can improve memory. The perceptual-interference effect was investigated from the perspective of the item-specific/relational encoding distinction. This perspective suggests that perceptual interference enhances item-specific encoding but disrupts the encoding of relational and order information. The results of 6 experiments were largely consistent with this view. In Experiments 1 and 2, perceptual interference (a hypothesized item-specific manipulation) and list organization (a relational manipulation) both enhanced free recall but had opposite effects on a measure of relational processing (category clustering). Increasing list organization increased clustering, whereas perceptual interference decreased clustering. In addition, perceptual interference typically decreased memory for order. Finally, when order information was an important determinant of free recall, the perceptual-interference effect was eliminated or reversed. When reliance on order information was lessened, the perceptual-interference effect reemerged.
Article
Adaptationism is a research strategy that seeks to identify adaptations and the specific selective forces that drove their evolution in past environments. Since the mid-1970s, paleontologist Stephen J. Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin have been critical of adaptationism, especially as applied toward understanding human behavior and cognition. Perhaps the most prominent criticism they made was that adaptationist explanations were analogous to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (outlandish explanations for questions such as how the elephant got its trunk). Since storytelling (through the generation of hypotheses and the making of inferences) is an inherent part of science, the criticism refers to the acceptance of stories without sufficient empirical evidence. In particular, Gould, Lewontin, and their colleagues argue that adaptationists often use inappropriate evidentiary standards for identifying adaptations and their functions, and that they often fail to consider alternative hypotheses to adaptation. Playing prominently in both of these criticisms are the concepts of constraint, spandrel, and exaptation. In this article we discuss the standards of evidence that could be used to identify adaptations and when and how they may be appropriately used. Moreover, building an empirical case that certain features of a trait are best explained by exaptation, spandrel, or constraint requires demonstrating that the trait's features cannot be better accounted for by adaptationist hypotheses. Thus, we argue that the testing of alternatives requires the consideration, testing, and systematic rejection of adaptationist hypotheses. Where possible, we illustrate our points with examples taken from human behavior and cognition.