When 2 is Better Than 1 + 1

Abstract

Little is known about older spousal dyads’ collaborative problem solving. Although typically collaborating dyads perform worse than nominal dyads in other dyadic cognition tasks, we assumed that older couples might profit from collaboration in a highly demanding problem-solving task requiring the sequential and complementary use of spatial memory and reasoning abilities. In this paper, we examine whether older couples profit from the dyadic situation on a computer-based problem-solving task that can most likely be optimally solved when dyads manage to distribute responsibilities between the spatial memory demands and the reasoning demands of the task. In 50 married couples consisting of N = 100 older individuals (M = 67.3 years, SD = 4.9), we tested the hypothesis that compared to their own individual performance, compared to repeated individual performance of a control group (N = 41, M = 66.0 years, SD = 3.8), and compared to nominal pairs (same 100 participants as in the experimental group), older couples would show the best performance on the task. The comparison of individual versus dyadic problem-solving performance demonstrates that dyads consisting of old spouses outperform old individuals as well as nominal pairs on the problem-solving task. Our results suggest that older familiar dyads are expert collaborators whose collaborative expertise might be able to overcome individual deficits in problem-solving skills through dyadic cognition.