Department of Psychology, University of Trier, Johanniterufer 15, 54290, Trier, Germany.
University of Koblenz-Landau, Mainz, Germany.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2020 Aug;20(4):717-729. doi: 10.3758/s13415-020-00798-1.
Memories formed in the context of an imagined survival scenario are more easily remembered, but the mechanisms underlying this effect are still under debate. We investigated the neurocognitive processes underlying the survival processing effect by examining event-related potentials (ERPs) during memory encoding. Participants imagined being either stranded in a foreign land and needing to survive, or in an overseas moving (control) scenario, while incidentally encoding a list of words. Words encountered in the survival context were associated with improved recall and reduced false-memory intrusions during a later memory test. Survival processing was associated with an increased frontal slow wave, while there was no effect on the overall P300 amplitude, relative to the control scenario. Furthermore, a subsequent memory effect in the P300 time window was found only in the control scenario. These findings suggest that survival processing leads to a shift away from lower level encoding processes, which are sensitive to motivation and stimulus salience and which were evident in the control scenario, to more active and elaborative forms of encoding. The results are consistent with a richness of encoding account of the survival processing effect and offer novel insights into the encoding processes that lead to enhanced memory for fitness-relevant information.
在想象的生存场景中形成的记忆更容易被记住，但这种效应的机制仍存在争议。我们通过检查记忆编码过程中的事件相关电位（ERP）来研究生存处理效应的神经认知过程。参与者想象自己被困在异国他乡并需要生存，或者在海外搬家（对照）场景中，同时偶然地对一系列单词进行编码。在后来的记忆测试中，在生存情境中遇到的单词与更好的回忆和减少错误记忆侵入有关。与对照场景相比，生存处理与额部慢波增加有关，而对整体 P300 幅度没有影响。此外，仅在对照场景中发现 P300 时间窗中的后续记忆效应。这些发现表明，生存处理导致从对动机和刺激显著性敏感的较低水平的编码过程转移，这些过程在对照场景中很明显，到更积极和详细的编码形式。这些结果与生存处理效应的丰富编码解释一致，并为导致与适应性相关信息记忆增强的编码过程提供了新的见解。
