Collective memory: Collaborative and individual processes in remembering.

“... has shown that collaborative inhibition sometimes does not occur despite reasonably high recall (about 55%) (shallow processing of a list of unrelated pictures; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997, Experiment 1), and collaborative inhibition can be substantial when high levels of recall (about 63%–78%) are associated with en…”

“As for the cognitive mechanisms associated with the costs and benefits of collaboration on memory, Weldon and Bellinger (1997) provided a good description of collaborative inhibition , whereby collaborative groups remember fewer items than nominal groups.”

“However, Weldon and Bellinger (1997), Experiment 2) used an audio recording of the ‘‘War of the Ghosts’’ story (first used by Bartlett, 1932) to test recall during two sessions, performed by individuals either alone or in three-person groups.”

“Although a collaborating group recalls more than a given individual, the group recalls significantly less than its potential, a phenomenon called collaborative inhibition (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“The typical collaborative recall experiment (e.g., Weldon & Bellinger, 1997) involves an encoding phase in which participants are individually presented with material (e.g., wordlists) that they will later be asked to recall.”

“Unlike the advantages touted by Weldon and Bellinger (1997), learning by collaboration may thus be counterproductive, at least initially, and the most optimal condition might be a compromise of learning alone but with accompaniment that enriches memory processing.”

“More importantly, this increase in recall across repeated collaborative recall trials cannot be attributed to re-exposure, because no reexposures (or additional study opportunities) were provided between recall trials (Blumen & Rajaram, 2008; Meudell et al., 1992, 1995; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Collaborative inhibition reliably occurs in both younger (e.g. asden et al., 1997; Blumen & Rajaram, 2008; Congleton & Rajaram, 011; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997) and older adults (Blumen & Stern, 011; Henkel & Rajaram, 2011; Johansson, Andersson, & Rönnberg, 000a, 2000b; Johansson, Andersson, &…”

“This is because it gives participants opportunities to solidify their group-level retrieval organisation (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997) and enables them to benefit from re-exposure to the studied materials they did not recall, but that were recalled by other group members during the first collaboration…”

“…been identified for a whole range of memory stimuli including categorised and uncategorised word list recall (e.g. Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), story recall (e.g. Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), and historical facts (Yaron-Antar & Nachson, 2006), this study demonstrated…”

“…the experimental “collaborative recall” paradigm provided a strict method for quantifying the influence of a group on how much is remembered (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), and research in this domain typically finds that collaboration reduces recall productivity (see Marion & Thorley, 2016…”

“The collaborative-recall paradigm stems from research on recall of simple stimuli (e.g., Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Meudell, Hitch, & Boyle, 1995; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“As a result of this, collaboration can enhance individual memory (Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2007; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“A similar 2 (Participant Condition) × 3 (Valence) ANOVA conducted on the false alarm rates revealed no main effects nor interaction (all Fs < 1.6, all ps > .21) (See Table 2).”

“At least at first, collaborative memory researchers were mostly unaware of the relevance of transactive memory theory (e.g., Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000; Finlay, Hitch, & Meudell, 2000; but see for..? Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Earlier work in this arena was primarily focused on the impact of joint storytelling on memory performance (see Weldon & Bellinger, 1997 ).”

“…respect to the benefits and costs of working in groups (Barber, Rajaram, & Aron, 2010; Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000; Congleton & Rajaram, 2011; Cuc, Koppel, & Hirst, 2007; Finlay, Hitch, & Meudell, 2000; Gabbert, Memon, & Wright, 2006; Roediger, Meade, & Bergman, 2001; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Weldon and Bellinger (1997) compared overall productivity of collaborative and nominal groups.”

“Related research has been concerned with how communication about the past in small groups shapes memory (e.g., Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“If this happens in a group, initial ideas might even create a collaborative inhibition, which will impair the performance of the whole group working on the same problem (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“We were specifically interested in the role of two opposing mechanisms that operate during collaborative retrieval—the negative effects of retrieval disruption that accrue from seeing or hearing other group members’ responses, and the positive effects of re-exposure to study material that accrue from seeing or hearing…”

“The idea that organizational learning can be achieved by performing tasks repeatedly (autonomous learning) and by conscious efforts (induced learning) was first suggested by Levy (1965) and developed further by Dutton and Thomas (1984).”

“Previous work employing stimuli containing a narrative structure (such as stories, real-life events) did not specifically examine errors (Cuc, Ozuru, Manier, & Hirst, 2006; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997; Yaron-Antar & Nachson, 2006).”

“The standard explanation for these surprisingly robust results is that individual retrieval or decision-making strategies are easily disrupted by the group process (Basden et al. 1997; Weldon and Bellinger 1997).”

“…1997), but less DOI 10.1027/1864-9335.40.3.119 © 2009 Hogrefe Publishing Social Psychology 2009; Vol. 40(3):119–129 than the sum of what each individual is capable of recalling (so-called collaborative inhibition; e.g., Andersson & Ronnberg, 1995; Basden et al., 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“In studies examining collaborative inhibition, group recall is typically worse than the pooled recall of an equal number of participants working alone ( Weldon & Bellinger, 1997 ).”

“These benefits represent not just an elimination of the usual collaborative inhibition seen in most collaborative recall studies (e.g., Basden et al., 1997; Weldon and Bellinger, 1997; for reviews see Harris et al., 2008; Rajaram, 2011), but genuinely emergent outcomes where couples perform together in ways that are l…”

“…found for a variety of verbal episodic tasks (e.g., recall of unrelated word-lists, categorised word-lists, prose, history texts, videotaped lectures), as well as for spatial episodic tasks (Andersson & RoÈ nnberg, 1995, 1996, 1997; Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“They provide an initial paradigm for exploring those relations in a laboratory context that may afford more control, consistent with some of the laboratory traditions of exploring both collaborative remembering (eg, Weldon et al, 1997 ) and self-perceptions ( Rhodewalt, 1998 ).”

“This could occur either through reduced motivation to be productive or cascading errors of recall, both of which could have inhibiting effects on collaborative productivity (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Thus, we found no clear evidence of collaborative inhibition during the discussion, unlike previous studies on recall of simple stimuli (e.g., Basden et al., 1997, 2000; Finlay, Hitch, & Meudell, 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“This is known as collaborative inhibition (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997; for reviews, see Rajaram, 2011; Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2010).”

“However, detrimental effects have been observed in several memory tasks (Andersson & Ronnberg, 1996; Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“An individual may be part of a number of different social groups (e.g., peers, family, colleagues), each with its own function and specific social dynamics (e.g., member status) that dictate different styles, purposes and contents of the reminiscing of its members (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Consistent with previous literature, collaborating groups recalled more presented material than did individuals (Pritchard & Keenan, 2002; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“This is known as collaborative inhibition (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997 ).”

“…have found that remembering in a group often, counter-intuitively, impairs the group’s overall memory performance compared to the pooled, nonoverlapping recall of the same number of individuals remembering alone (Basden et al. 1997; Rajaram & Pereira- Pasarin, 2010; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Social influences have been found to affect subjects’ ability to recall word lists (Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997) and to recall stories (Betz, Skowronski, & Ostrom, 1996).”

“As in past studies (Basden et al., 1997, 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), a similar pattern was found for the retrospective memory task too.”

“In other studies people have participants arrive in groups, and then are assigned groups either to a recall-together condition or to a recall-sepa-rately condition (for example, Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Indeed, research comparing groups to individuals when performing relatively simple recall tasks shows that working in a group can be detrimental (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Since this surprising outcome was initially reported (Basden et al., 1997a; Weldon and Bellinger, 1997), it has been replicated across several laboratories and summarized in a meta-analytic study (Marion and Thorley, 2016).”

“Weldon and Bellinger (1997) found that while group scores were higher than individual scores for each member, they appeared to be below the pooled results of the students (note that “pooled results” match to the concept of the super student we use in this article), which was taken as evidence of…”

“Shared memories also facilitate communication of events, interpersonal relations, group histories, and government and social policy, as well as the characterization of groups and institutions (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“On memory and brainstorming tasks, interacting pairs fail to meet their dyadic potential (Andersson, 2001; Mullen, Johnson, & Salas, 1991; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997; cf. Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000).”

“…leading explanation of collaborative inhibition is the retrieval disruption hypothesis, which refers to the idea that the output of one group member disrupts the way in which another group member has organised information to be output during recall (Basden et al., 1997; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“This phenomenon has been labeled collaborative inhibition ( Weldon & Bellinger, 1997 ), an effect of interference caused by seeing another person’s recall (Wright & Klumpp, 2004).”

“Collaborative inhibition, as termed by Weldon and Bellinger (1997), posits that collaborative groups remember less when compared with nominal groups (groups of individuals working independently); especially when the collaborative groups are comprised of unfamiliar individuals such as juries.”

“And the choices we make are based often on events and experiences that appear to fit with our present concerns (Bartlett, 1932; Weldon and Bellinger, 1997).”

““Nominal scores” were calculated to pool individual recall as is standard in the collaborative recall paradigm (Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“…predictably recall more than a person recalling alone, collaboration actually lowers group recall when compared to the recall of nominal groups, a phenomenon known as collaborative inhibition in recall (Basden et al., 1997a; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997; see Marion & Thorley, 2016 for a metanalysis).”

“Many other studies agree with the results of this study, that collaborative learning is better than individual learning (Mason & Watts, 2011; Kolloffel, Eysink, & de Jong, 2011; Chen & Law, 2016; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Weldon and Bellinger (1997) showed that groups have superior recall in comparison to individuals.”

“Scenarios like this involving two or more people remembering together are termed the collaborative memory (Basden, Basden, & Henry, 2000; Marion & Thorley, 2016; Meade & Roediger, 2009; Rajaram & Pereira-Pasarin, 2010; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“Experiments in this tradition have reliably demonstrated that individuals remembering in a group remember less than they would have alone: collaborative groups recall less than nominal groups (collaborative inhibition; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“…without concurrent retrieval), suggesting a possible dissociation between socially-shared retrieval-induced forgetting and socially-shared retrievalinduced facilitation (for a more general discussion of parallels and differences between individual and group recall, see Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”

“…recall is higher for pictures than words (Paivio and Csapo 1973), is stronger for teams than individuals, even for private information known only by one person (Weldon and Bellinger 1997), and that using images to illustrate ideas helps persuade other group members (Stigliani and Ravasi 2012).”

“Social influences on human cognitive processes are now being studied aggressively in research domains that previously focused primarily on the individual, including attention [1], perception [2], memory [3], and language [4].”

“In summary, social factors shape memory (e.g., Barber, Rajaram, & Aron, 2010; Fivush, 1998; Gabbert, Memon, & Allan, 2003; Hyman, 1994; Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Pasupathi et al., 1998; Roediger, Meade, & Bergman, 2001; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997; Wells & Bradfield, 1998).”

“Collaborative inhibition refers to the finding that each individual in a collaborative group recalls less than would be predicted by pooling the unique responses of individuals working alone into a nominal group (e.g., Weldon & Bellinger, 1997; see Harris, Paterson, & Kemp, 2008, for a review).”

“…critical lures (Thorley & Dewhurst, 2007), stories (Andersson & Rönnberg, 1995; Takahashi & Saito, 2004; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997), a videotaped lecture (Andersson & Rönnberg, 1995), a short clip from a movie (Ekeocha & Brennan, 2008), and pictures (Finlay et al., 2000; Weldon & Bellinger, 1997).”