Influence of survival processing and delay on recollection and familiarity in recognition

The survival processing effect is a robust memory phenomenon of memory whereby encouraging participants to judge words for relevance to a survival situation produces better recall than other processing tasks such as semantic or self-reference tasks (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007). The present study separated memory performance into recollection and familiarity, and estimated the contribution of these two factors to the survival processing effect as adaptive memory by using a recognition test based on the dual-process signal detection model. This study also examined the long-term persistence of the effect by delay manipulation (immediate, after a week, after five weeks) of the recognition test. Under delayed conditions (after a week and five weeks), survival processing advantage occurred on recollection, but semantic processing had no effect. In contrast, for familiarity, there was no significant difference between survival and semantic processing. These findings suggest that the survival processing effect mainly relies on recollection.