Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
Sci China Life Sci. 2013 Nov;56(11):1028-37. doi: 10.1007/s11427-013-4537-6. Epub 2013 Aug 27.
We investigated the psychological mechanism of survival processing advantage from the perspective of false memory in two experiments. Using a DRM paradigm in combination with analysis based on signal detection theory, we were able to separately examine participants' utilization of verbatim representation and gist representation. Specifically, in Experiment 1, participants rated semantically related words in a survival scenario for a survival condition but rated pleasantness of words in the same DRM lists for a non-survival control condition. The results showed that participants demonstrated more gist processing in the survival condition than in the pleasantness condition; however, the degree of item-specific processing in the two encoding conditions did not significantly differ. In Experiment 2, the control task was changed to a category rating task, in which participants were asked to make category ratings of words in the category lists. We found that the survival condition involved more item-specific processing than did the category condition, but we found no significant difference between the two encoding conditions at the level of gist processing. Overall, our study demonstrates that survival processing can simultaneously promote gist and item-specific representations. When the control tasks only promoted either item-specific representation or gist representation, memory advantages of survival processing occurred.
我们从错误记忆的角度，通过两个实验探究了生存加工优势的心理机制。采用 DRM 范式并结合信号检测理论的分析方法，我们分别考察了被试对词的字面和语义两种水平的加工。具体来说，在实验 1 中，被试在生存情境下对语义相关词进行生存评价，在非生存控制条件下对 DRM 列表中的词进行愉快度评价。结果发现，与愉快度条件相比，被试在生存条件下表现出更多的语义加工；然而，两种编码条件下的项目特异性加工程度并无显著差异。在实验 2 中，我们改变了控制任务，被试对类别列表中的词进行类别评价。结果发现，与类别条件相比，生存条件下的项目特异性加工更多，但在语义加工水平上，两种编码条件之间没有显著差异。总之，本研究表明，生存加工能够同时促进项目特异性和语义水平的加工。当控制任务仅促进项目特异性或语义水平的加工时，生存加工会产生记忆优势。
