Costs And Benefits Of Collaborative Memory

Previous research has found the costs and benefits of collaborative memory.The cost of collaborative memory is collaborative inhibition that the collaborative group has worse recall performance than nominal group.The benefits of collaborative memory are error pruning and post-collaborative recall benefits.The former means the collaborative group has higher error pruning compared with the nominal group,while the latter means the collaborative group has better recall performance on later individual recall test.However,nearly all the prior studies focus on the costs of collaborative memory but fail to explore the benefits of collaborative memory.Also,research about collaborative memory mainly discuss item recall task,the question of how collaboration influences source retrieval task remains to be solved.Moreover,the cognitive machanism of collaborative memory is of great interest.Therefore,in current study we aimed to explore collaborative memory in two experiments by using stimuli of category words and DRM lists.Each experiment included sixty effective participants:Twenty in the individual group and forty in the collaborative group.The nominal group was constructed by randomly choosing two participants from the individual group.Experiment 1 contained eight categories,six exemplars each category and Experiment 2 contained six DRM lists,twelve exemplars each list.All exemplars were two-character Chinese words displayed in red and green.During the study phase,participants were asked to identify the displayed color.During the first test phase,participants were instructed to recall the previously studied words(item recall)and the color of each word(source retrieval)individually or collaboratively.During the second test phase,participants were instructed to recall the previously studied words and the color of each word individually.Two tasks in Experiment 1 revealed robust costs and benefits of collaborative memory:Collaborative inhibition,error pruning and post-collaborative recall benefits.The recall tasks interact with the strength of collaborative inhibition and error pruning,showing that collaborative inhibition was stronger in item recall,while error pruning was higher in source retrieval.Caregory access was significantly higher in collaborative group than in indidivual group in the second recall test,showing the promotion of collaboration on relational processing.Experiment 2 also found that the instrusion of lure words was lower in collaborative group than in indidivual group,showing the promotion of collaboration on item-specific processing.To conclude,collaboration both inhibits and benefits memory,resulting in collaborative inhibition,error pruning and post-collaborative recall benefits.The different patterns between the two recall tasks of collaborative inhibition and error pruning give support to the dual-process model.Results also show the promotion of collaboration on item-specific processing and relational processing,wich can explain the cognitive mechanism of collaborative memory.