Recognition of Own and Others' Utterances in a Natural Conversation

Abstract

48 subjects discussed a criminal case in groups of 8. After two weeks, 31 were tested on recognition accuracy of utterances from the discussion. Recognition items were either the subjects' own statements, or statements from other participants in their group, or new. As expected, it was found that self-generated utterances were recognized as occurring more often during the conversation than other-generated utterances. A second factor varied focus of reference at recognition time: An item was attributed either to the subject himself or herself, or to some other unspecified person in the group. Primed self-reference at recognition time was expected to enhance recognition performance. This prediction was confirmed. Additionally, response confidence for self-referent items proved to be a more valid indicator of their correctness than confidence for other-referent items. The findings are discussed in terms of memory search. Focusing on the self as a highly structured search space enables the individual to recognize utterances-irrespective of their real source-more accurately than focusing on the memory representation of the group process as a whole.