Date of Award

Spring 2026

Language

English

Embargo Period

4-30-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Program

Cognitive Psychology

First Advisor

Jeanette Altarriba

Committee Members

Jeanette Altarriba, Gregory Cox, Rebecca Johnson

Keywords

adaptive memory, emotion word processing, survival processing, valence effects

Subject Categories

Cognitive Psychology

Abstract

Encoding information (e.g., words) in terms of their survival value produces enhanced recall relative to encoding the same information in terms of its value to other schematically similar situations (Nairne et al., 2007). In the survival memory paradigm, a scenario focused on imagining being stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land is followed by the rating of individual words (e.g., orange, mountain) as to their relevance to that scenario (Nairne et al., 2007). Using an incidental test of memory, it is often revealed that memory for those words is higher than for those same words encoded under non-survival, control contexts. However, to date, no studies have focused on the emotional content of the to-be-remembered words. The current The current set of studies examined the effects of word valence on the memorability of those words within a survival processing paradigm. The original words were compared to neutral items (Experiment 1), and positive vs. negative emotion-laden (Experiment 2), and emotion label words (Experiment 3) were compared. Overall, findings indicate that valence of the to-be-remembered items may contribute to the survival advantage to some extent. The current work informs research on the processing of emotional stimuli within survival contexts and the ways in which emotion works to shape the evolution of human memory systems.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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