Investigations of a reproductive processing advantage in memory

Abstract

Previous work has shown that processing words for their survival value improves memory. If this survival processing effect reflects an evolutionary adaptation in memory, processing words for their reproductive value should also improve memory. Across three experiments, participants rated words for their relevance in reproductive scenarios. In Experiment 1, participants rated adjectives (traits) for their relevance in finding a mate, evaluating a coworker, or in terms of their pleasantness. Mate processing produced better memory than pleasantness ratings, but not coworker processing. In Experiment 2, participants rated traits for their relevance in detecting sexual or emotional infidelity. Neither processing condition produced better memory compared to pleasantness ratings, but there were several unpredicted interactions involving participant sex and jealousy responses. In Experiment 3, participants rated gifts for their appropriateness in a romantic date or a housewarming party, or in terms of their pleasantness. Date processing and housewarming processing both improved recall compared to pleasantness rating, but date processing and housewarming processing did not produce differences compared to each other. Overall, the current study demonstrates very little evidence of a reproductive processing effect, and nothing approaching the magnitude of previous work on the survival processing effect.

Adaptive memory: Is there a reproduction-processing effect?

“…Our reproduction scenario is perhaps most similar to that used by Sandry et al (2013) although they begin their scenario asking subjects to imagine that, “you are stranded in the grassland of a foreign land, without someone to mate with.” This contrasts with our scenario that asked subjects to imagine, “ that you are living , thousands of years ago, in the grasslands of a foreign land, and are looking to find a mate .” Although this is seemingly a subtle difference, the implication that one is ‘stranded’ versus ‘living’ in a foreign environment may have influenced how subjects envisioned the imagined encoding scenarios or how subjects perceived the importance of finding a mate in each particular situation. Lastly, Derringer et al, (2017) had participants rate traits based on their desirability in a potential mate and compared subsequent recall to that when participants rated traits based on their desirability in a potential coworker and also recall by a control group that rated the perceived pleasantness of those traits. As those authors noted, the novelty of using traits (i.e., adjectives) instead of concrete nouns is potentially problematic due to the fact that adjectives and nouns differ in terms of visualizability and concreteness, not to mention familiarity and arousal, all of which are factors that could potentially influence recall.…”

Adaptive Memory: Remembering Potential Mates

“…Indeed, thinking about a potential mating partner could arguably be more relevant to the self than thinking about a potential coworker. Yet, previous studies have failed to find a mating effect when participants had to rate the relevance of words (objects and traits) to a mating context (as compared to various control conditions), a task that is presumably more self-relevant than the controls used (e.g., Derringer et al, 2017;Klein, 2013;Sandry et al, 2013). These findings suggest that self-relevance is not a major contributor to the mnemonic efficiency found in fitness-relevant domains in general and to our findings in particular, although further research is clearly needed.…”

“…The studies that have used the survival paradigm to address this question have failed to obtain evidence for such a reproduction-related tuning. In such studies, participants were invited to rate the relevance of random words to selecting a mate (Klein, 2013), to some other mating-related activity (Sandry et al, 2013), to whether object nouns could be used as gifts to be given on a romantic date (Derringer, Scofield, & Kostic, 2017), or participants rated trait adjectives in the context of considering a romantic partner or of predicting infidelity (Derringer et al, 2017). Memory for the rated words or adjectives was then tested.…”

“…In a recent study, Derringer, Scofield, and Kostic (2017) had participants rate the relevance of trait adjectives to a set of different conditions. Their argument was that trait adjectives that described potential mates would be more relevant to selecting a mate than object nouns (the stimuli used in previous studies).…”

Adaptive Memory: Generality of the Parent Processing Effect and Effects of Biological Relatedness on Recall

“…Whether or not a memory benefit exists for selecting a mate appears to be contingent on the experimental procedure. Those that have created novel encoding scenarios similar to that of survival processing but with the emphasis on finding a mate have not found significant memory benefits (Derringer, Scofield, & Kostic, 2017;Klein, 2013;Sandry, Trafimow, Marks, & Rice, 2013;Seitz et al, 2018). However, there is evidence that memory can be influenced by aspects of human mating outside of the survival processing paradigm.…”