Adaptive memory: Ancestral priorities and the mnemonic value of survival processing

James S. Nairne, Josefa N.S. Pandeirada
2010 Cognitive Psychology  
Evolutionary psychologists often propose that humans carry around "stone-age" brains, along with a toolkit of cognitive adaptations designed originally to solve hunter-gatherer problems. This perspective predicts that optimal cognitive performance might sometimes be induced by ancestrally-based problems, those present in ancestral environments, rather than by adaptive problems faced more commonly in modern environments. This prediction was examined in four experiments using the survival
more » ... ng paradigm, in which retention is tested after participants process information in terms of its relevance to fitness-based scenarios. In each of the experiments, participants remembered information better after processing its relevance in an ancestral environment (the grasslands), compared to a modern urban environment (a city), despite the fact that all scenarios described similar fitnessrelevant problems. These data suggest that our memory systems may be tuned to ancestral priorities.
doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.01.005 pmid:20206924 fatcat:rceozfm4kjeczp36gg55hxggnq