Survival processing occupies the central bottleneck of cognitive processing: A psychological refractory period analysis.

ABSTRACT: Words judged for relevance in a survival situation are remembered better than words judged for relevance in a nonsurvival context. This survival processing effect has been explained by selective tuning of human memory during evolution to process and retain information specifically relevant for survival. According to the richness-of-encoding hypothesis the survival processing effect arises from a domain-general mechanism-namely, a particularly rich and distinct form of encoding. This form of information processing is effortful and requires limited cognitive capacities. In our experiment, we used the well-established psychological refractory period framework in conjunction with the effect propagation logic to assess the role of central cognitive resources for the survival processing effect.

SUBMITTER: Kroneisen M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10867088 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature