Abstract: The effect of survival processing advantage refers to that words incidentally processed for their relevance to a survival scenario have better true recognition and recall relative to other deep processing controls and rival scenarios. There have been a number of studies on this topic since it was found five years ago, and several models which used to explain this effect turn up. The present article makes a review about those studies, which specially focus on four models with the introduction and analysis of recent studies in details: The Thematic Processing Hypothesis、The Congruity Effect Hypothesis、The Emotional Processing Hypothesis and The Nature Selection Hypothesis. According to the first hypothesis, participants who are led to carry on survival processing incline to put all the study words together on the basis of the survival theme, namely processing for the relationship of these words. As to the second hypothesis, the congruity between the processing scenario and the meaning of the study words might contribute to the prevalent survival processing advantage, which makes the words easier to remember and retrieval. According to the third hypothesis, survival processing simply leads to more arousal or emotional processing of the rated words. Increased arousal might serve as a general proximate mechanism, something that improves retention regardless of the specific context. According to the last hypothesis, a more convincing account of this effect, nature changes all the time, in order to adapt this change, the brain of our ancestors may change correspondingly, and we might be inherited a toolkit of cognitive adaptations that were designed originally to solve hunter-gatherer problems. In combination with prior studies, researches show that the theory of thematic processing、congruity effect and emotional processing seem not enough to explain this advantage, the theory of nature selection seems to explain it better, but the theory of nature selection is lake of some direct evidence. According to the nature selection theory, it may emerge several assumptions: ①The adaptation rooted in nature selection is inherited our ancestor, so infant and old people should show this effect, and it can exist through one's life. ②The nature selection restricts the role of gender, it should show the difference of the gender role when the processing scenario is aimed at the role. ③Memory is adaptive, so survival processing should retain information longer than other processing in order to serve future. ④Survival and reproduction are closely linked with each other, if reproduction scenario can produce a good retention, it can be regard as a convincing argument for the nature selection theory. Whatever happens, the effects of survival processing advantage indeed exist. For this reason, in the scene of daily life and education which are far away from the laboratory, whether survival processing can promote student's retention and has different effect on students of different age should become the focus of development and education psychologist.

Key words: the effect of survival processing advantage, thematic processing hypothesis, congruity effect hypothesis, emotional processing hypothesis, nature selection hypothesis

摘要： 生存优势效应指对学习材料进行“生存加工”，其提取正确率最高。研究者试图用主题加工、一致性效应、情绪加工和自然选择等理论对生存优势效应进行解释。研究发现主题加工、一致性效应和情绪加工不足以说明生存优势现象，自然选择理论似乎可以更好地对此加以解释，但目前自然选择理论尚缺乏直接的实验证据支持。文章结合已有研究具体分析了最近的未来研究应该关注的焦点问题，例如，自然选择理论的直接证明，并对直接证明的方案等进行了尝试性的讨论。

关键词: 生存优势效应, 主题加工, 一致性效应, 情绪加工, 自然选择