The role of group configuration in the social transmission of memory: Evidence from identical and reconfigured groups

Abstract

Collaborating with others during recall shapes both group and individual memories. Individuals contribute less when recalling in groups than when recalling alone, a phenomenon called collaborative inhibition. In contrast, collaboration improves post-collaborative individual memory by providing re-exposure to information that would have been otherwise forgotten. Collaboration also influences collective memory—the overlap in post-collaborative memory among group members. We examined the role of group configuration on such transmission of memory by varying group configuration across repeated recalls. Participants (N = 162) studied words and completed three recall sessions in one of three conditions (N = 54/condition): Individual–Individual–Individual (Control), Collaborative–Collaborative (Identical group)–Individual and Collaborative–Collaborative (Reconfigured group)–Individual. Collaborative inhibition occurred in both the Identical and Reconfigured groups during the first recall but disappeared in the Reconfigured groups during the second recall. Post-collaborative individual memory was greater following Reconfigured than Identical group collaboration. This pattern reversed for collective memories; repeated collaboration increased overlap in the remembered and forgotten items in Identical groups compared to Reconfigured groups. Finally, Reconfigured groups provided a quantifiable index of the influence of distal partners (i.e., no direct collaboration involved) on post-collaborative individual memory. We conclude that group configuration has powerful consequences on the amount, the similarity and the variety of memory representations.

Keywords:

• Collaborative inhibition
• Collaborative memory
• Collective memory
• Proximal-distal partners
• Reconfigured groups
• Social transmission of memory

Notes

¹ Post-collaborative memory can also be affected by contagion of memory errors and, conversely, the pruning of memory errors that occur during collaboration (Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2010, for a fuller treatment of multiple mechanisms). A discussion of these mechanisms is beyond the scope of the present paradigm and thus is not included here.

² The variety was separately quantified using the audio-recorded data collected during every collaborative recall session. We examined the proportions of items recalled by other group members (i.e., re-exposure) during the first and second collaborative sessions of CCI and CRI conditions. As expected, the re-exposure was not different between CCI (M = .34, SE = .01) and CRI (M = .33, SE = .01) during Recall 1, t (88) = 1.01, SE = .02, p = .32, but significantly higher for CRI (M = .44, SE = .01) than for CCI (M = .39, SE = .01) during Recall 2, t (88) = 3.62, SE = .02, p < .001, d = .78.

³ For the CRI condition, the data needed for this analysis were available for 12 triads. The findings reported using unequal sample size analyses were replicated even when using 12 triads in both conditions.