Proximate mechanisms of the survival-processing advantage: Predicting memory from object and scenario-specific judgment parameters

Judging whether an object is relevant for a scenario in which one is
stranded and in need of shelter, food, and water is a powerful mnemonic
compared to other encoding strategies. Here, we examine why such
survival-relevance judgments lead to better memory than relevance
judgments for a control scenario (i.e., a moving scenario). Using objects
that elicited high, low, or mixed relevance ratings in a previous study, we
compared how often survival and moving-relevance judgments would
change from a first, quick intuitive response to a second, deliberated
response. Results (N = 190) showed that survival-relevance judgments
more often changed from irrelevant to relevant than moving-relevance
judgments, but only for objects that received mixed ratings in our
previous study. In our next study (https://osf.io/tcevb/), we will test the
hypothesis that the possibility and likelihood of a change of judgment
predict which objects underlie the finding of enhanced memory following
survival-relevance judgments.