Collaborative Recall Research Articles

Transmitting False Memories in Social Groups

In 2 experiments, subjects studied word lists drawn from Roediger and McDermott (1995) and then participated in perceived group recall (PGR) tests that were intended to lead each subject to believe that she or he was participating in collaborative recall in a 4-person group. Some of the lists were followed by PGR tests containing the nonpresented critical word, some lists were followed by PGR tests not containing the nonpresented critical word, and some lists were not followed by PGR tests. Subjects then completed individually administered recall tests and subsequent immediate or delayed recognition tests that required remember or know judgments. The major finding was that critical words contained within PGR tests were as likely to be falsely recalled, recognized, and consciously remembered as original list items. These findings show that false memories can be socially transmitted.

Social contagion of memory.

We report a new paradigm for studying false memories implanted by social influence, a process we call the social contagion of memory. A subject and confederate together saw six common household scenes (e.g., a kitchen) containing many objects, for either 15 or 60 sec. During a collaborative recall test, the 2 subjects each recalled six items from the scenes, but the confederate occasionally made mistakes by reporting items not from the scene. Some intrusions were highly consistent with the scene schema (e.g., a toaster) while others were less so (e.g., oven mitts). After a brief delay, the individual subject tried to recall as many items as possible from the six scenes. Recall of the erroneous items suggested by the confederate was greater than in a control condition (with no suggestion). Further, this social contagion effect was greater when the scenes were presented for less time (15 sec) and when the intruded item was more schema consistent (e.g., the toaster). As with other forms of social influence, false memories are contagious; one person's memory can be infected by another person's errors.

Mutual inhibition in collaborative recall: evidence for a retrieval-based account.

In Experiment 1 participants gave 3 successive free recalls of items learned either individually or in pairwise collaboration. The first and third recalls were performed individually, the second alone or in collaboration. Collaborative recall led to an inhibitory effect after individual learning but not after collaborative learning, in which partners had similar retrieval strategies. Consistent with a retrieval locus for collaborative inhibition, non-recalled items reappeared in subsequent individual recall. Experiment 2 showed that collaborative inhibition was eliminated when a separate retrieval cue was given for each item. Experiments 2 and 3 also showed that when participants learned items in the same order, their retrieval strategies were more similar and they showed less collaborative inhibition. It is concluded that mutual interference in collaborative recall is due to the mutual disruption of individual retrieval strategies.

Mutual inhibition in collaborative recall: Evidence for a retrieval-based account.

Mutual inhibition in collaborative recall: Evidence for a retrieval-based account.

Scoring options for recall tests (SORT), Version 2.0: Updated to include false memory analyses, nominal group creation, and phenomenological measures

Scoring Options for Recall Tests (SORT) 2.0 was designed to make the entry and analysis of recall test data efficient and easy. SORT 1.0, its predecessor, computed a variety of analyses, including (1) measures of clustering and subjective organization, (2) descriptive measures, and (3) temporal analysis measures. SORT 2.0 includes all of these analyses, as well as a variety of new ones designed to reflect current trends in experimental research. Some of the new features include (1) the creation of nominal groups for comparison in collaborative recall studies, (2) false memory analysis measures using the Deese (1959)/Roediger and McDermott (1995) paradigm (e.g., output position of nonpresented items, item analysis, net false recall), and (3) phenomenological measures (e.g., confidence ratings or remember/know judgments). In addition, SORT 2.0 has an easy Windows interface, extensive error trapping, and on-line help; it allows for quick inspection of means and is fully compatible with projects created with SORT 1.0.

The Benefits of Peer Collaboration on Strategy Use, Metacognitive Causal Attribution, and Recall

This study examined the benefits of a peer collaborative activity on cognitive strategy use and effectiveness, and on metacognitive understanding of strategy use. Children's knowledge about the effectiveness of the sorting strategy grouped them into lower and higher metacognitive understanding. Treatment group triads, consisting of children with lower and higher levels of metacognitive understanding, were given a collaborative recall task. Results indicated that interaction with children working at a higher level of metacognitive knowledge, in conjunction with directions to explicitly discuss strategies, increased strategy use and induced higher levels of metacognitive thinking in children who had been operating at lower levels of metacognitive thinking. Overall, children's use of the sorting strategy and recall performance improved as a function of treatment group membership. Implications for future research are discussed.

Peer group play and co-childrearing in Japan: A historical ethnography of a fishing community

This research took a cultural-historical perspective, investigating children's social play and peer group interactions in cross-age groups. Participants lived in a local fishing community which had undergone dramatic changes during Japan's postwar era of high economic growth. An ethnographic description based on fieldwork and the collaborative recall of middle-aged community members clarified the growth process. This community traditionally maintained a co-rearing system to support children during long separations from their parents who were absent for months on fishing expeditions. Through ethnographic descriptions, three characteristics of the children's play and peer groups in this community were revealed: (1) they were constrained by geographical proximity; (2) the play group was hierarchically structured according to the member's age and went through a nine-year cycle; and (3) adults and children, while segregated from each other as social groups, used the same field (the ocean environment) for thier activities. The function of peer group play experiences for child development as a community member was related to the concepts of “community of play” and “prototype models.”

Recall suffers from collaboration: Joint recall effects of friendship and task complexity

AbstractCollaborative recall in episodic memory tasks was investigated in two experiments. The experiments were explicitly designed to investigate how the interaction between two subjects influences group productivity. Subjects were requested to recall twice, first individually, and second, in different subject constellations (individually, or in dyads, as friends or non‐friends). Experiment 1 employed free recall of words and story recall. In Experiment 2, a video‐taped lecture on child development was recalled. The observed score at the second recall (Recall 2) was compared with the nominal predicted score, based on the initial recall. The results of the experiments are summarized and discussed in four clusters: (1) observed productivity for dyads never reached their predicted potential; (2) the negative effects of collaborative recall can be reduced; (3) friends rather than non‐friends, and complex rather than simple tasks, reduce the loss in productivity; and (4) the data also suggest that encoding alone is superior to collaborative encoding.

The Effects of Dyadic Discussion on Earwitness Recall

Some 112 introductory psychology students served as subjects in a mock kidnapping study. Subjects overheard a telephone conversation by a perpetrator discussing his crime and were tested for their reconstructions of the incident either 10 min later or 48 hr later. Dyadic discussion followed by collaborative recall did not increase the overall accuracy of individual's reconstructions of the incident, but it did produce consistent, concise, and conventional accounts of the incident. Reliably, more fabrications were found in the dyadic-discussion-individual-recall group than in the recalls of the collaborative-dyad group and the no-discussion-individual-recall group. Estimations of the duration of the incident also were reliably inferior in the dyadic-discussion-individual-recall condition. Given only the voice of the perpetrator, subjects' judgments of height, weight, and age were estimated poorly. Rated descriptions of voice attributes and personality traits of the perpetrator generally were not influenced...

Origins of the misplaced confidence effect in collaborative recall

AbstractStudies have shown that dyads and groups place significantly more confidence in wrong answers to questions about a jointly witnessed event than do individuals. This experiment was designed to discover whether this misplaced confidence is influenced by prior free collaborative recall of the events in question. The results clearly indicated that prior group remembering lessens the effect, and improves the testimonial validity of both individual and group answers to questions about a jointly witnessed event. Taken in conjunction with other studies, the results imply that two or more witnesses of an event may profitably discuss what happened, but that they may best be interrogated separately in order to maximize the information available to the interrogator and to minimize misplaced confidence.

Meetings make evidence? An experimental study of collaborative and individual recall of a simulated police interrogation.

Meetings make evidence? An experimental study of collaborative and individual recall of a simulated police interrogation.