The Study Of Memory Adaption

The present study investigated the function of memory of human beings in the perspective of evolutionary psychology. If memory evolves in the process of natural selection, its characteristics should be with the brand of natural selection. Researchers have seldom taken the function of memory into consideration in their past studies on memory evolution. In order to enhance the possibilities of reproduction which is the aim of memory evolution, the function of memory seems to keep the information on survival. Nairne et al. (2007) discovered the survival advantage effect in memory: comparing with other control conditions, judging the relevance between words and grasslands survival scenario can improve one's memory on these words. Based on the paradigm in Nairne's study, the present study demonstrated the existence of survival advantage effect from different perspectives via three experiments. Three experiments were listed below:Experiment 1:by setting two conditions of primitive hunting and hunting contest respectively, the performance of free recall on words under those two conditions were investigated. The result showed that the performance under primitive hunting were better than that one under hunting contest. Although both of those two conditions showed us the same action of hunting, the difference between the two is that subjects needed to imagine whether the aim of their hunting was to survive or to win the game. The primitive hunting condition activated contexts related to survival in subjects' minds, causing the result that subjects in primitive hunting group behaved in the free recall task better than those in hunting contest group.Experiment 2:adopting a paradigm similar to experiment 1, this experiment took both pictures and words as materials, and used recognition test instead of free recall test. The result showed that there were not significant differences of subjects' performance in two conditions. Adding the R/K judgment task after the recognition task in order to investigated the reason of no significant difference. The result of the R/K judgment task showed there were more "know" responses in primitive hunting group than in hunting contest group. Hence, that the difference between the code conditions of two contexts was not sensitive to "remember" response might be the reason why the difference of performances in recognition task of two groups was not significant.Experiment 3:by setting two contexts of collection and hunting, this experiment investigated whether performances of both male and female subjects would show difference under those two conditions. The result showed that male subjects behaved better than females in the condition of hunting, while females behaved better than males in the condition of collection. This is caused by the fact that the difference of work of males and females in early human society led to the difference of memory function.In conclusion:(1) one's memory in contexts related to survival is better than the one in other control condition; (2) there are differences in survival between males and females:male behaves better than female in the condition of hunting, while female behaves better than male in the condition of collection.