1036 Experiment 1 Method Participants One hundred twenty undergraduates (Mage = 21.18 years, SD = 3.73; 33 men) were involved in this experiment. They received course credit or a financial reimbursement (€5) for their participation. Testing took place in separate laboratory rooms at the university. Sessions lasted for approximately 30 min. The experiment was approved by the standing ethical committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University. Materials We used a Dutch translation of the stimulus materials employed in previous studies (e.g.,mountain, pepper; Nairne et al., 2007). They contained 30 words of typical members selected from 30 unique categories (Van Overschelde, Rawson, & Dunlosky, 2004). Design and procedure The present experiment employed a between-subjects design with condition (survival, professor stereotype, elderly stereotype, and moving) as an indepen- dent variable. Participants were randomly assigned to the survival (n = 30), professor stereotype (n = 30), elderly stereotype (n = 30), or moving (n = 30) group. More precisely, they received a Dutch version of one of the following scenarios: Survival: In this task, we would like you to imagine that you are stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land, without any basic materials. Over the next few months, you’ll need to find steady supplies of food and water and protect yourself from predators. We are going to show you some words, and we would like you to rate how relevant each word would be in this survival condition. Some of the words may be relevant and others not-it’s up to you to decide. Professor stereotype: In this task, we would like you to imagine that you are a college professor. You are specialized in the functioning of memory and in how memory can be optimized. We are going to show you some words, and we would like you to rate how relevant each word would be in this professor condition. Some of the words may be relevant and others not-it’s up to you to decide. Elderly person stereotype: In this task, we would like you to imagine that you are an elderly Alzheimer’s patientin a nursing home. Your memory is extremely poor and sometimes you cannot even recognize your family members. We are going to show you some words, and we would like you to rate how relevant each word would be in thiselderly condition. Some of Mem Cogn (2011) 39:1033–1041 the words may be relevant and others not-it’s up to you to decide. Moving: In this task, we would like you to imagine that you are planning to move to a new home in a foreign land. Over the next few months, you’ll need to locate and purchase a new home and transport your belong- ings. We are going to show you some words, and we would like you to rate how relevant each word would be in this moving condition. Some of the words may be relevant and others not-it’s up to you to decide. After they received the instructions, participants were asked to rate the relevance of the 30 words for the imagined scenario. Words were presented on a computer screen,one after the other, in the same random order, each word lasting for 5 s. Before the task started, they received two practice words to make sure that they comprehended the procedure. They had to rate the words on a scoring sheet using a 5- point rating scale with 1 referring to totally irrelevant and 5 signifying extremely relevant. They were alerted that they had to respond within a 5-s presentation interval, and no information was provided about a later memory test. Next, they had to play Tetris for 2 min as a distractor task. Finally, they were instructed to write down all the words they had encountered during the task. This final recall test lasted about 10 min. Results and discussion One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were conduc- tedon the dependent variables (correct recall, false recall, word relevance ratings). Posthoc comparisons were performed using Tukey’s honestly significant difference tests. Figure 1 displays the mean proportion of correct recall per condition. We found a significant effect of condition, F(3, 116) = 15.35, p < .001, ŋp2 = .28, with the survival group displaying superior retention, as compared with the other three groups (all ps < .05). Furthermore, our results showed that participants in the professor stereotype and the moving condition remembered significantly more 0.7 0.6 lla 0.5 c ren0.4 o i tro0.3 p roP0.2 0.1 0 Survival Professor Elderly Moving Fig. 1 Mean proportions (and SEMs)of correct recall as a function of condition (Experiment 1)