Collaborative Problem-Solving Interactions in Young and Old Married Couples

Abstract

The study explores the importance of conversational processes for understanding collaborative cognitive performance by examining the interactions of married couples that facilitate performance on 2 everyday cognitive tasks. Twenty-four adults, 6 young (M age = 29.7 years) and 6 older (M = 70.8 years) married couples, completed a vacation decision-making task and an errand-running task. Couples were asked to talk as they performed the tasks and speech acts were coded as to whether they involved high-affiliation exchanges (between-partner sequences of cooperative and obliging speech acts) or low-affiliation exchanges (between-partner sequences of controlling and withdrawing speech acts). Interactions characterized by high affiliation were associated with greater use of information and the use of feature based search strategies on the decision-making task and shorter routes on the errand-running task. Open-ended interviews revealed the importance of division of labor and delegation when collaborating in daily life. The results illustrate the diversity present in couples' interactive patterns and approaches to collaboration. Further, the results demonstrate the potential of integrating work on collaborative cognition and conversational processes.