Stillman Chelsea M, Coane Jennifer H, Profaci Caterina P, Howard James H, Howard Darlene V
Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, 301N White-Gravenor Building, 37th and P Streets NW, Washington, DC, 20057, USA,
Mem Cognit. 2014 Feb;42(2):175-85. doi: 10.3758/s13421-013-0353-2.
A number of studies have shown that information is remembered better when it is processed for its survival relevance than when it is processed for relevance to other, non-survival-related contexts. Here we conducted three experiments to investigate whether the survival advantage also occurs for healthy older adults. In Experiment 1, older and younger adults rated words for their relevance to a grassland survival or moving scenario and then completed an unexpected free recall test on the words. We replicated the survival advantage in two separate groups of younger adults, one of which was placed under divided-attention conditions, but we did not find a survival advantage in the older adults. We then tested two additional samples of older adults using a between- (Exp. 2) or within- (Exp. 3) subjects design, but still found no evidence of the survival advantage in this age group. These results suggest that, although survival processing is an effective encoding strategy for younger adults, it does not provide the same mnemonic benefit to healthy elders.
多项研究表明，当信息因与生存相关而被处理时，比因与其他非生存相关的情境相关而被处理时，能被更好地记住。在此，我们进行了三项实验，以调查健康的老年人是否也存在生存优势。在实验1中，老年人和年轻人对单词与草原生存或移动场景的相关性进行评分，然后对这些单词进行意外的自由回忆测试。我们在两组不同的年轻人中重复验证了生存优势，其中一组处于注意力分散的条件下，但在老年人中未发现生存优势。然后，我们使用组间设计（实验2）或组内设计（实验3）对另外两组老年人进行测试，但在这个年龄组中仍然没有发现生存优势的证据。这些结果表明，尽管生存处理对年轻人来说是一种有效的编码策略，但它对健康的老年人并没有提供同样的记忆益处。
