Remembering the place with the tiger: Survival processing can enhance source memory

Abstract

Rating the relevance of words for survival in the grasslands of a foreign land often leads to a memory advantage. However, it is as yet unclear whether the survival processing effect generalizes to source memory. Here, we examined whether people have enhanced source memory for the survival context in which an item has been encountered. Participants were asked to make survival-based or moving-based decisions about items prior to a classical source memory test. A multinomial model was used to measure old–new discrimination, source memory, and guessing biases separately. We replicated the finding of a survival advantage in old–new recognition. Extending previous results, we also found a survival-processing advantage in source memory. These results are in line with the richness-of-encoding explanation of the survival processing advantage and with an adaptive perspective on memory.