Adaptive memory: fitness relevance and the hunter-gatherer mind

Recent studies suggest that human memory systems are "tuned" to remember information that is processed in terms of its fitness value. When people are asked to rate the relevance of words to a survival scenario, performance on subsequent surprise memory tests exceeds that obtained after most other known encoding techniques. The present experiments explored this effect using survival scenarios designed to mimic the division of labor thought to characterize early hunter-gatherer societies. It has been suggested that males and females have different cognitive specializations due to the unique survival tasks (hunting and gathering, respectively) they typically performed during periods of human evolution; the present experiments tested whether such specializations might be apparent in memory for words rated for relevance to these activities. Males and females were asked to rate the relevance of random words to prototypical hunting and gathering scenarios or to matched, non-fitness-relevant control scenarios (gathering food on a scavenger hunt or in a hunting contest). Surprise retention tests revealed superior memory for the words when they were rated for relevance to hunting and gathering scenarios, compared with when they were rated for relevance to the control scenarios, but no sex differences were found in memory performance.