Abstract: Lots of research found that survival processing led to superior retention of the words relative to other semantic encoding tasks, which was termed survival advantage of memory. Nairne and Pandeirada (2011) claimed that survival processing may be a special and powerful memory encoding procedure; but Butler, Kang, & Roediger (2009) argued that Congruity effects between materials and processing tasks in the survival processing paradigm are critical cause of survival advantage of memory. In the present study, 2 experiments were conducted to investigate: 1) whether congruity will contribute to survival advantage of memory, namely whether people remember items better if those items are congruent with a survival scenario; 2) whether relevance of words to survival was the other cause of survival advantage of memory, namely whether higher relevance of words to survival will result in more superior memory performance. We preselected 45 words related to survival (15 high-related, 15 mid- related and 15 low-related words to survival scenario) and 24 words related to robbery (8 high-related, 8 mid-related, 8 low-related words to robbery scenario) by asking 80 participants to rate the words according to their relevance to survival scenario or to robbery scenario respectively. In experiment 1, 96 participants were asked to study 45 words in survival processing, pleasantness rating, and intentional memory procedures respectively, the results showed a significant survival advantage exists. In experiment 2a, we manipulated congruence between words and processing condition. 60 participants were asked to study 24 words related to robbery (preselected according to their relevance to robbery scenario) and 24 words related to survival (selected from experiment 1) in survival processing and robbery processing respectively; in experiment 2b, the other 60 participants were asked to study the same words as in experiment 2a under 2 unrelated processing conditions, such as pleasantness rating and intentional memory procedures respectively. The results of 2 experiments showed that: 1) congruence between words and processing condition enhanced memory performance, but not explained the whole survival advantage of memory; 2) high relevance to survival scenario of words per se did not result in survival advantage of memory, which may be affected by words frequency of study items preselected according to their relevance to survival, it deserves more further investigation. In a word, our results suggest survival advantage of memory is caused by survival processing, namely survival processing may be a special and powerful memory encoding procedure, which is consistent with the explanation of Nairne and Pandeirada (2011).

Key words: adaptive memory, survival advantage of memory, survival processing, congruity effects, relevance