Kazanas Stephanie A, Altarriba Jeanette
Department of Psychology, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY, USA.
Evol Psychol. 2015 May 7;13(2):360-96. doi: 10.1177/147470491501300204.
Recently, researchers have begun to investigate the function of memory in our evolutionary history. According to Nairne and colleagues (e.g., Nairne, Pandeirada, and Thompson, 2008; Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada, 2007), the best mnemonic strategy for learning lists of unrelated words may be one that addresses the same problems that our Pleistocene ancestors faced: fitness-relevant problems including securing food and water, as well as protecting themselves from predators. Survival processing has been shown to promote better recall and recognition memory than many well-known mnemonic strategies (e.g., pleasantness ratings, imagery, generation, etc.). However, the survival advantage does not extend to all types of stimuli and tasks. The current review presents research that has replicated Nairne et al.'s (2007) original findings, in addition to the research designs that fail to replicate the survival advantage. In other words, there are specific manipulations in which survival processing does not appear to benefit memory any more than other strategies. Potential mechanisms for the survival advantage are described, with an emphasis on those that are the most plausible. These proximate mechanisms outline the memory processes that may contribute to the advantage, although the ultimate mechanism may be the congruity between the survival scenario and Pleistocene problem-solving.
最近，研究人员开始探究记忆在我们进化史上的功能。根据奈尔恩及其同事（例如，奈尔恩、潘代拉达和汤普森，2008年；奈尔恩、汤普森和潘代拉达，2007年）的观点，学习不相关单词列表的最佳记忆策略可能是一种能解决我们更新世祖先所面临的相同问题的策略：与适应性相关的问题，包括获取食物和水，以及保护自己免受捕食者侵害。与许多著名的记忆策略（如愉悦度评级、意象、生成等）相比，生存加工已被证明能促进更好的回忆和识别记忆。然而，生存优势并不适用于所有类型的刺激和任务。本综述展示了重复奈尔恩等人（2007年）原始研究结果的研究，以及未能重复生存优势的研究设计。换句话说，存在一些特定的操作，在这些操作中，生存加工似乎并不比其他策略更有利于记忆。文中描述了生存优势的潜在机制，重点是那些最合理的机制。这些近端机制概述了可能促成这种优势的记忆过程，尽管最终机制可能是生存情景与更新世问题解决方式之间的一致性。
