Are two heads better than one? Experimental investigations of the social facilitation of memory
Abstract
The hypothesis that two people collaborating in recall would remember more than a single person was examined in a series of four experiments. All the experiments used variations on the same ‘sequential’ design where, in social conditions, people recalled alone initially and then recalled jointly in pairs: as a control for reminiscence, some people recalled alone on two separate occasions. On the second recall in all of the experiments two people always recalled more than one, but this was simply due to the independent statistical summation of two people's memories: no evidence whatsoever was found for the pairs of people generating new information that was not available to either member of the pair. This surprising result was not attributable to artefacts linked to the complexity or familiarity of stimulus material, nor was it linked to variations in people's cognitive perspectives. No evidence of social facilitation of memories was therefore found: two people recalling together certainly pool their separate memories so as to outperform individuals but the social interaction does not appear to generate previously unavailable memories.
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Not all studies have found positive effects for collaboration.
“It must be noted, however, that not all studies have found positive effects for collaboration (e.g., Andersson and Rönnberg 1995;Kirschner et al. 2009c;Meudell et al. 1992).”
From Making the Black Box of Collaborative Learning Transparent: Combining Process-Oriented and Cognitive Load Approaches (2010) · cites this paper as Meudell et al. 1992
Individual learning is superior to group learning for relatively simple recall tasks.
“These findings are consistent with previous research on group versus individual learning which showed that group learning is superior to individual learning for relatively complex problem-solving tasks (Laughlin et al. 2002;Laughlin et al. 2006) and that individual learning is superior to group learning for relatively simple recall tasks (e.g., Andersson and Rönnberg 1995;Meudell et al. 1992;Weld”
From Making the Black Box of Collaborative Learning Transparent: Combining Process-Oriented and Cognitive Load Approaches (2010) · cites this paper as Meudell et al. 1992
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- Authors
- Meudell, P. R., Hitch, G. J., & Kirby, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Manchester (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Meudell, Peter R.
- ORCID
- Hitch, Graham J.
- Venue
- Applied Cognitive Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1992-11
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 525-543
- ISSN
- 0888-4080 (ISSN-L)
- 1099-0720
- OpenAlex
- W2091533890
- Cited by
- 106
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 0.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Applied Cognitive Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Keywords
- collaborative recall, memory pooling, reminiscence
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