Pandeirada Josefa N S, Fernandes Natália Lisandra, Vasconcelos Marco, Nairne James S
1 Department of Education and Psychology, CINTESIS.UA, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal.
2 Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
Evol Psychol. 2017 Oct-Dec;15(4):1474704917742807. doi: 10.1177/1474704917742807.
According to the adaptive memory perspective, memory should function more efficiently in fitness-relevant domains. The current work explored whether there is a mnemonic tuning in a fundamental domain for human evolution: reproduction. In two experiments, female participants assessed how desirable potential male candidates (represented by a face and a short descriptor) would be in the context of a long-term mating relationship or in the context of a long-term work relationship. Then, after a short distractor task, participants performed a recognition task for the faces and a source memory task. Finally, they were asked to recall the descriptors presented during encoding. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design, whereas Experiment 2 employed a within-subject design. In both experiments, participants remembered the faces best when they were encoded in the mating condition. Also, in Experiment 1, source memory performance was better in the mating condition than in the working condition with the reverse being true for free recall of the descriptors. The latter difference was not observed in Experiment 2. These results suggest a potential mnemonic tuning for the faces of potential mate partners.
根据适应性记忆观点，记忆在与适应性相关的领域应能更高效地发挥作用。当前研究探讨了在人类进化的一个基本领域——生殖方面，是否存在记忆调整。在两项实验中，女性参与者评估了潜在男性候选人（以一张面孔和简短描述呈现）在长期伴侣关系或长期工作关系背景下的合意程度。然后，经过一个简短的干扰任务后，参与者对面孔执行识别任务以及源记忆任务。最后，要求他们回忆编码过程中呈现的描述。实验1采用组间设计，而实验2采用组内设计。在两项实验中，当面孔在求偶条件下进行编码时，参与者对面孔的记忆最佳。此外，在实验1中，源记忆在求偶条件下的表现优于工作条件，而描述的自由回忆情况则相反。实验2中未观察到后一种差异。这些结果表明，对于潜在配偶面孔可能存在记忆调整。
