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Memory Accuracy and Errors: the Effects of Collaborative Encoding on Long-Term Retention

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Abstract

We examined the effects of collaboration during the occurrence of an event on subsequent memory for that event, giving special attention to the impact of social relation on the duration of these effects. Ninety-six participants were assigned to one of three encoding conditions (working alone, collaborating with a friend or collaborating with an unfamiliar peer) to generate descriptions for visualization using thematic list items as cues. Participants next completed a memory test for the list items immediately and following a 48-h retention interval. Results showed that the cohesiveness of participants’ descriptions was negatively correlated with false recognition errors when collaborating with a friend. Importantly, this relationship was maintained over the 48-h retention interval. Results also showed that collaborating pairs remember the source of explicit lure activations (i.e., the source of related items not presented by the experimenter) over the 48-h retention interval. Thus, social interaction during the occurrence of an event has an influence on subsequent memory reports and the nature of the relationship between collaborating pairs has a sustaining influence as well. The implications of these findings for accounts of memory reconstruction processes are discussed while offering new directions for autobiographical memory research.

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Notes

  1. These data were also analyzed using corrected recognition measures for true recognition (computed as the proportion of incorrect “yes” responses to new items subtracted from the proportion of correct “yes” responses to presented items) and for false recognition (computed as the proportion of incorrect “yes” responses to control lures subtracted from the proportion of incorrect “yes” responses to related lures). The results of 2(Retention Interval: Immediate vs. 48-h Delay) × 3(Encoding Condition: Solo, Unfamiliar Partner, Familiar Partner) Mixed Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) with retention interval a repeated measures variable on both corrected recognition measures were identical to the results for correct “yes” responses to presented items and incorrect “yes” responses to related lures reported in the Results section of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

Preliminary results of this study were reported by the first author at the Psychonomic Meetings, November, 2013, Toronto, CA. We thank Adina Fried for her help in coding and scoring the data. This research was supported by NSF Grant #BCS 1023890.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (grant number #BCS 1023890).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Skidmore College, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866, USA

    Rebecca Brooke Bays, Mary Ann Foley, Stephanie Madlener & Catherine Haorei

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  1. Rebecca Brooke Bays
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  2. Mary Ann Foley
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  3. Stephanie Madlener
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  4. Catherine Haorei
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Correspondence to Rebecca Brooke Bays.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Bays, R.B., Foley, M.A., Madlener, S. et al. Memory Accuracy and Errors: the Effects of Collaborative Encoding on Long-Term Retention. Curr Psychol 38, 1335–1346 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9689-2

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