Animacy and Mortality Salience: New Directions for the Adaptive Memory Literature

Altarriba, Jeanette; Kazanas, Stephanie A.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-25466-7_4

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…A relatively new area of research that extends the original efforts of Nairne et al (2007) investigates the relationship between animacy and memory (for a recent review, see Altarriba & Kazanas, 2019). Using the evolutionary account for the survival advantage, we might expect that the survival advantage would generalize to other fitness-related domains.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paired-associate learning, animacy, and imageability effects in the survival advantage

2020

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paired-associate learning, animacy, and imageability effects in the survival advantage

2020

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“…Researchers now aim to test its generalizability and boundary conditions, for example, finding comparable memory benefits for animacy (VanArsdall et al, 2013), mortality salience (Burns et al, 2014), and contamination (Fernandes et al, 2017). Some mixed findings in these areas further necessitates an updated meta-analysis and additional work (Altarriba & Kazanas, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive memory: Greater memory advantages in bilinguals’ first language

Kazanas

Wilck²,

Altarriba

2021

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: In this study, we examined memory performance in a bilingual population, in an effort to compare depth of processing and complexity across first and second languages. Design/methodology/approach: Complexity was investigated with a pleasantness rating task and an elaborative encoding, scenario-based rating task (i.e. rating words for their survival-relevance). Previous research found word recall largely benefited from an ancestral context that primed participants to think deeply about the survival-relevance of a list of concrete, neutral words. Engaging this more elaborative processing may lead to better memory if the human memory system is particularly tuned toward remembering survival-relevant materials. Data and analysis: Participants included 127 Spanish-English bilinguals, randomly-assigned to complete survival-relevance or pleasantness ratings in either Spanish or English. Aggregated language history data self-reported by participants (e.g. language-learning environments, age of acquisition, and so on), suggested an L1 of Spanish and L2 of English. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) compared word recall across these tasks and languages. Findings/conclusions: We hypothesized better recall performance collected from bilingual participants in the survival condition using their first, more often emotional, language. Our results support this hypothesis, with bilinguals replicating the memory advantage for words rated for their survival-relevance in Spanish (their L1), but not in English (their L2). Originality: While this paradigm has largely been studied with monolingual English-speakers, or in some cases, other languages, no study has explored its replicability in a Spanish-English bilingual population’s two languages. Significance/implications: These findings speak to the on-going effort to understand word processing and memory differences—particularly with regards to processing complexity—across bilinguals’ first and second languages.

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