The Contributing Factors Of Encoding And Age On Collaborative Inhibition

Collaborative inhibition refers to the phenomenon where by a collaborative group recalls less than do the same number of individuals who work alone and then have their nonredundant responses pooled. Based on previous studies, the research aims to explore the factors of encoding manipulations on collaborative inhibition in group recall and the performance of the individuals at different ages on this effect.Four experiments were included in the research:Participants studied categorized word lists under conditions of full versus divided attention in Experiment1. After studying the word lists one time, participants in the experiment2recalled them one or two times or none and then went to collaborative group or nominal group. Experiment3tested the collaborative inhibition phenomenon under conditions in which participants rated words for survival processing, pleasantness, self-reference. Experiments4explored the performances of students of8,11,14,17and20years old under conditions of self-control study versus other-control study.The research drew the following conclusions:①Collaborative inhibition effect is present in the full attention condition, but disappears in the divided attention condition.②Collaborative inhibition effect is attenuated when items are recalled individually two times before collaborative or nominal recall.③Collaborative inhibition effect is present in the conditions of survival processing, pleasantness or self-reference encoding. The effect size of survival processing is the lowest, and there is no difference between pleasantness and self-reference condition.④All five groups of participants show the collaborative inhibition effect and there is no different among participants of different ages both in the conditions of self-control study and other-control study. ⑤For the ages of8,11,17and20, there is no difference of collaborative inhibition effect size between self-control study and other-control study condition. While for the student of14years old, the effect size of self-control study is greater than other-control study condition.