“…This difference was statistically significant (independent samples t -test: t (90) = 4.74, p < .001, Difference 95% CI [5.85–14.31%], d = 0.99, d 95% CI [0.55–1.43]). This finding, depicted in Figure 2, is consistent with previous work, demonstrating that collaboration can boost subsequent individual recall performance (eg, Bärthel et al 2017; Blumen and Rajaram 2008; Nie et al 2019; Weldon and Bellinger 1997). Figure 2.Experiment 1 – Recall 2: individual-level recall (per cent of correct words recalled).…”
Technology has transformed how people interact with one another. According to two recent Pew Research Center surveys (2021a; 2021b), 97 per cent of United States adults have a cell phone, 85 per cent have a smartphone, 93 per cent use the Internet, and 77 per cent have broadband Internet access at home. The Internet has opened countless doors by providing unprecedented access to information and connecting people. While we know from laboratory research that context and collaboration can influence memory, little is known about how virtual collaboration affects memory and whether in-person studies generalise to virtual contexts. In this article, we discuss the challenges, value, and broader relevance of extending laboratory-based memory research to online platforms. In doing so, we report a virtual collaborative memory paradigm, where we examine individual and social remembering in a fully online, chat-based setting, and present data from two completely virtual experiments. In Experiment 1, online participants studied a word list and, in a chatroom, recalled the words either alone (as controls) or with two other participants. Surprisingly, collaborative inhibition – the robust finding of lower recall in collaborative groups than controls – disappeared. This outcome occurred because participants who worked alone recalled less than what we see in in-person studies. In Experiment 2, where instructions were modified and an experimenter was present, individual performance improved, resulting in collaborative inhibition. We reflect on the contextualised nature of this effect in online settings, for both collaborative and individual remembering, and on the implications for the study of memory in the digital age.
“…This difference was statistically significant (independent samples t -test: t (90) = 4.74, p < .001, Difference 95% CI [5.85–14.31%], d = 0.99, d 95% CI [0.55–1.43]). This finding, depicted in Figure 2, is consistent with previous work, demonstrating that collaboration can boost subsequent individual recall performance (eg, Bärthel et al 2017; Blumen and Rajaram 2008; Nie et al 2019; Weldon and Bellinger 1997). Figure 2.Experiment 1 – Recall 2: individual-level recall (per cent of correct words recalled).…”
Technology has transformed how people interact with one another. According to two recent Pew Research Center surveys (2021a; 2021b), 97 per cent of United States adults have a cell phone, 85 per cent have a smartphone, 93 per cent use the Internet, and 77 per cent have broadband Internet access at home. The Internet has opened countless doors by providing unprecedented access to information and connecting people. While we know from laboratory research that context and collaboration can influence memory, little is known about how virtual collaboration affects memory and whether in-person studies generalise to virtual contexts. In this article, we discuss the challenges, value, and broader relevance of extending laboratory-based memory research to online platforms. In doing so, we report a virtual collaborative memory paradigm, where we examine individual and social remembering in a fully online, chat-based setting, and present data from two completely virtual experiments. In Experiment 1, online participants studied a word list and, in a chatroom, recalled the words either alone (as controls) or with two other participants. Surprisingly, collaborative inhibition – the robust finding of lower recall in collaborative groups than controls – disappeared. This outcome occurred because participants who worked alone recalled less than what we see in in-person studies. In Experiment 2, where instructions were modified and an experimenter was present, individual performance improved, resulting in collaborative inhibition. We reflect on the contextualised nature of this effect in online settings, for both collaborative and individual remembering, and on the implications for the study of memory in the digital age.
“…In a typical research paradigm of collaborative memory, participants first study a list of items separately and then take a recall test either individually or collaboratively. Research adopting this paradigm has confirmed that people working collaboratively remember more items than individuals working alone (Barnier et al, 2018;Harris et al, 2017;Nie et al, 2019Nie et al, , 2021Nie et al, , 2022. Such findings are in line with the commonsensical saying "strength in numbers. "…”
Section: Detrimental and Beneficial Effects Of Ongoing Collaborationsupporting
confidence: 72%
“…Scenarios involving at least two people remembering together are termed collaborative memory (Maswood et al, 2019;Nie et al, 2019Nie et al, , 2021Nie et al, , 2022. In a typical research paradigm of collaborative memory, participants first study a list of items separately and then take a recall test either individually or collaboratively.…”
Section: Detrimental and Beneficial Effects Of Ongoing Collaborationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the collaborative groups, participants are informed to retrieve collaboratively. The nominal group is equal in size to the collaborative group, and members are randomly assigned to retrieve individually (Bärthel et al, 2017;Browning et al, 2018;Maswood et al, 2019;Nie et al, 2019Nie et al, , 2021Nie et al, , 2022.…”
Section: Detrimental and Beneficial Effects Of Ongoing Collaborationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Regarding the quantity of correctly remembered items, collaborative groups perform worse than nominal groups, and this difference is termed collaborative inhibition, a detrimental effect (Barber et al, 2015;Bärthel et al, 2017;Browning et al, 2018;Nie et al, , 2022. On the contrary, the number of errors is significantly lower in collaborative versus nominal groups, and this beneficial effect is called error pruning (Bärthel et al, 2017;Browning et al, 2018;Nie et al, 2019Nie et al, , 2021Nie et al, , 2022Rossi-Arnaud et al, 2018).…”
Section: Detrimental and Beneficial Effects Of Ongoing Collaborationmentioning
Existing collaborative memory research has shown statistically significant detrimental and beneficial effects (i.e., collaborative inhibition, error pruning, and post-collaborative memory benefit). However, it remains unknown yet whether they are modulated by stimulus emotionality of adjacent stimuli and whether they would differ in distinct memory tasks (item memory vs. source memory). To address these issues, the current study adopted the emotional timeout procedure, where participants individually studied a series of triplets (a preceding neutral word, a modulator word of taboo, nontaboo negative, neutral, or positive emotionality, and a following neutral word) displayed in red or green, and three recall sessions and a surprise recognition test was conducted afterwards. Results revealed reliable beneficial effects of collaboration. (a) The error pruning was reliably observed within ongoing and lasting collaboration in item memory tasks while it faded away post-collaboration in source memory conditions. (b) The post-collaborative memory benefit was confirmed in all word positions. It occurred in taboo, neutral, and positive words for modulators of different emotionality, while that of the preceding and following neutral words were insensitive to the emotionality of the modulator. The effect was only present in item memory, offering compelling evidence for dual-process models. (c) Collaboration facilitated the picked-up effect and the formation of shared memory. However, the detrimental effect of collaborative inhibition was absent in both memory tasks. These findings demonstrated that the mechanisms of the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis (RSDH) took effect under the emotional timeout procedure to a certain degree.
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