|
Article Excerpt
Some recent studies of memory have concentrated on social aspects, and have involved two people talking of shared experiences (Edwards & Middleton, 1986). Collaborative remembering refers to this type of remembering (see for reviews, Clark & Stephenson, 1989; Hartwick, Sheppard, & Davis, 1982; Weldon, 2000).
When we consider the overall correct performance, many studies show that groups of two or more always recall more than an individual (Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Meudell, Hitch, & Boyle, 1995; Meudell, Hitch, & Kirby, 1992; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997). However, recent researchers prefer to compare the performance of collaborative with that of nominal groups to allow for a statistical comparison (Basden et al., 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997). Performance of nominal groups (the sum of the recall of each individual) is determined by pooling the non-redundant recalls of individual working alone. Thus, the performance of nominal groups represents the level of productivity one would expect if group interaction neither facilitated nor inhibited group productivity. When the performance of nominal and actual groups are compared, the most interesting result is that collaborative groups recalled less than nominal groups. Weldon and Bellinger referred to this effect as collaborative inhibition. Typically, collaborative inhibition occurs with groups of three or more (Basden et al., 1997; Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), but can occur with pairs (Andersson & Ronnberg, 1995; Finlay, Hitch, & Meudell, 2000; Takahashi & Saito, 2004), although nominal pairs sometimes exhibit no difference from actual pairs (Basden et al., 2000).
One promising explanation for collaborative inhibition is related to a retrieval inhibition process similar to the process that underlies the inhibitory effect of part-set cueing (Basden et al., 1997; Finlay et al., 2000). The part-set cueing effect refers to the phenomenon that giving a subset of the list items as recall cues inhibits recall of the remaining items (see for reviews, Nickerson, 1984; Roediger & Neeley, 1982). One largely accepted interpretation--that is, the retrieval-strategy disruption interpretation--posits that a participant's preferred retrieval strategy can be disrupted by giving a subset of the list items during recall (Basden & Basden, 1995). Since participants in a collaborative group interact with each other, it is likely that one person could provide a subset of the target items to the other members in the group. In other words, it is possible to assume that there could involve similar retrieval-strategy inhibition under the part-set cueing and collaborative inhibition (Basden et al., 1997; Finlay et al., 2000).
However, when we consider errors, previous research is not so straightforward. Although early researchers found that groups are more accurate than individuals (Perlmutter & de Montmollin, 1952; Yuker, 1955), recent researchers have shown that mean intrusion errors for collaborative groups are greater than those for individuals (Basden et al., 1997; Basden, Basden, Thomas, & Souphasith, 1998).
The present experiments were primarily interested in whether, during recall, collaborative groups produce more, or less, intrusion errors than individuals. To compare collaborative and individual error rates, we require high levels of intrusion errors such as those in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In the DRM paradigm, individual participants learn lists of words that are each semantically associated with a critical non-presented word. The typical finding is remarkable levels of false recall and false recognition (see for reviews, Roediger, Balota, & Watson, 2001; Roediger, McDermott, & Robinson, 1998). The present experiments used this DRM paradigm and the collaborative and individual intrusion errors were compared. To the best of my knowledge, only one study (Basden et al., 1998) has compared collaborative (groups of three people) and nominal (three people tested individually) groups using the DRM paradigm. Although they observed collaborative inhibition of studied words, the recall of critical non-presented words was equivalent for both kinds of groups. However, Basden et al. used an atypical turn-taking recall procedure in which each participant in the collaborative groups had to recall one word per turn. As Basden et al. discussed, it seems reasonable to assume that during such a turn-taking procedure participants in collaborative groups would feel more obligation to contribute and would have a lower threshold for response production than during a standard recall procedure in which each person could talk at will. In order to approximate as closely as possible a natural social setting and to expand the generality of their results, the present experiments used a standard free-recall procedure. Under such a 'free for all' recall procedure, people in collaborative groups might be afraid to make a mistake and so adopt a conservative recall criterion to output words. As a result, collaborative groups should produce less false recalls than individuals. This reasoning is supported by the findings of Ross, Spencer, Linardatos, Lam, and Perunovic (2004). They found that collaboration reduced memory errors with older couples and familiar memory tasks (e.g. remembering items from a shopping list), although they replicated previous findings of collaborative inhibition. On the basis of signal detection analyses, they concluded that collaboration induced individuals to be more conservative in the memory tasks.
Spreading activation has been proposed as one explanation for the creation of false memories (Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Roediger et al., 1998, 2001). According to the spreading activation account, the critical non-presented word becomes activated as an implicit associate response to its associates in the study list. Given the strength of spreading activation is a function of the total number of activated list words, the greater number of the associate words in the list should increase the probability of false remembering. This prediction is supported by several investigators (e.g. Robinson & Roediger, 1997). Some researchers argue that false memories may be partially created during tests (Marsh, McDermott, & Roediger, 2004; Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
Basden...
|
