Mixed Messages: The Multiple Audience Problem and Strategic Communication

Cued Memory Collaboration: Effects of Friendship and Type of Retrieval Cue

“…Fleming & Darley, 1991;Fussell & Krauss, 1989). Combined, these main e ects clearly demonstrate the end-points of the performance continuum: The friends that retrieved aǹ`o ld item' ' word-list with cues produced with``for others' ' instructions, and the non-friends that retrieved/guessed a``new item' ' word-list with cues produced with``for themselves' ' instructions, were the two conditions that contributed to the best and the worst performances, respectively.…”

“…Friends or couples develop a speci® c and unique way of communicating to share and divide their mental potential to be successful in di erent tasks (Fleming & Darley, 1991;Fussell & Krauss, 1989;Wegner, Erber, & R aymond, 1991). Fleming and Darley (1991) suggest that friends (read: senders) use strategic communication processes, and Wegner et al (1991) suggest that couples develop a transactive memory which represents implicit knowledge of the partner' s way of thinking.…”

“…Fleming and Darley (1991) suggest that friends (read: senders) use strategic communication processes, and Wegner et al (1991) suggest that couples develop a transactive memory which represents implicit knowledge of the partner' s way of thinking. Even if the unique communication strategy that friends and couples develop is more or less implicit, it obviously a ects the possibilities for maximising memory performance.…”

“…In the studies of Fleming and Darley (1991) and Fussell and Krauss (1989), friends knew that their messages or descriptions were to be used by a friend.``For others' ' and``for themselves' ' instructions were used in the present study to explore to what extent friends with``for others' ' instructions can improve retrieval compared to non-friends and friends with``for themselves' ' instructions. Friends are predicted to outperform non-friends regardless of instruction type, but friends who know that a message is intended for a friend may also perform better than friends that do not know that their message is intended for a friend.…”

“…When retrieval cues are produced by others, neither dyadic generation nor the dyadic retrieval condition will be negatively a ected by collaboration. Based on transactive memory (Wegner et al, 1991) and the fact that friends can intentionally send messages in a unique way to communicate more e ectively (Fleming & Darley, 1991), it was predicted that friends would outperform non-friends in the retrieval of words. Friends will outperform non-friends even if the retrieval phase includes a``new item' ' word-list.``For others' ' instructions during the generating phase will presumably increase the retrieval performance compared to participants that have``for themselves' ' instructions.…”