Summary: A new study reveals collaborating in a group to remember information can potentially be harmful.
Source: University of Liverpool.
A new study by psychologists from the University of Liverpool and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) reveals that collaborating in a group to remember information is harmful.
The research, conducted by Dr Craig Thorley, the University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, and Dr Stéphanie Marion, from UOIT’s Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, statistically analysed 64 earlier collaborative remembering studies and found that groups recall less than their individual members would if working alone.
The same study also found that collaborative remembering boosts later individual learning: people who previously recall in a group remember more than those who do not.
The research provides the first systematic investigation into the costs and benefits of collaborative remembering.
Collaborative inhibition
Collaborative remembering is important as it is used in a number of different everyday settings. In the workplace, interview panels jointly recall candidates’ answers before deciding who to employ. In the courtroom, jurors work together to recall trial evidence prior to reaching a verdict. In schools and universities, students work together to revise course content prior to exams.
The study, published in Psychological Bulletin this week, first compared the recall of collaborative groups to the pooled recall of an equivalent number of individuals. For example, if a collaborative group consisted of four people, their recall was compared to that of four individuals who worked alone but whose recall was combined. Collaborative group recall was consistently lower than pooled individual recall. This effect is known as collaborative inhibition.
The study suggests collaborative inhibition occurs as group members disrupt each other’s retrieval strategies when recalling together.
Retrieval strategies
Dr Craig Thorley, said: “Collaborative group members develop their own preferred retrieval strategies for recalling information. For example, Person A may prefer to recall information in the order it was learned but Person B may prefer to recall it in the reverse order. Importantly, recall is greatest when people can use their own preferred retrieval strategies.
“During collaboration, members hear each other recall information using competing retrieval strategies and their preferred strategies become disrupted. This results in each group member underperforming and the group as a whole suffers. Individuals who work alone can use their preferred retrieval strategies without this disruption so recall more.”
Several factors were also found to influence the extent to which collaborative inhibition occurs. One of these findings was collaboration is more harmful to larger groups than smaller groups. Another was that friends and family members are more effective at working together than strangers.
Dr Thorley adds: “Smaller groups perform better than larger groups as they contain fewer competing (disruptive) retrieval strategies. Friends and family members perform better than strangers as they tend to develop complementary (and not competing) retrieval strategies”.
Collaboration Boosts Later Memory
The study also compared the recall of people who had previously collaborated in a group to the recall of people who had previously worked alone. It was found that collaborating in a group boosted later individual recall.
Dr Stéphanie Marion, states: “We believe that this occurs as working in a group means people are re-exposed to things they may have forgotten and this boosts their memory later on. One of the important consequences of this is that it suggests getting people to work together to remember something (e.g., students revising together) is beneficial for individual learning.”
Source: University of Liverpool
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is adapted from the University of Liverpool press release.
Original Research: Abstract for “A Meta-Analytic Review of Collaborative Inhibition and Postcollaborative Memory: Testing the Predictions of the Retrieval Strategy Disruption Hypothesis” by Marion, Stéphanie B.; and Thorley, Craig in Psychological Bulletin. Published online September 12 2016 doi:10.1037/bul0000071
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Liverpool. “Group Work Can Harm Memory.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 14 September 2016.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/group-work-memory-5044/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Liverpool. (2016, September 14). Group Work Can Harm Memory. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved September 14, 2016 from https://neurosciencenews.com/group-work-memory-5044/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Liverpool. “Group Work Can Harm Memory.” https://neurosciencenews.com/group-work-memory-5044/ (accessed September 14, 2016).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
A Meta-Analytic Review of Collaborative Inhibition and Postcollaborative Memory: Testing the Predictions of the Retrieval Strategy Disruption Hypothesis
The retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis (Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997) is the most widely cited theoretical explanation for why the memory performance of collaborative groups is inferior to the pooled performance of individual group members remembering alone (i.e., collaborative inhibition). This theory also predicts that several variables will moderate collaborative inhibition. This meta-analysis tests the veracity of the theory by systematically examining whether or not these variables do moderate the presence and strength of collaborative inhibition. A total of 75 effect sizes from 64 studies were included in the analysis. Collaborative inhibition was found to be a robust effect. Moreover, it was enhanced when remembering took place in larger groups, when uncategorized content items were retrieved, when group members followed free-flowing and free-order procedures, and when group members did not know one another. These findings support the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis as a general theoretical explanation for the collaborative inhibition effect. Several additional analyses were also conducted to elucidate the potential contributions of other cognitive mechanisms to collaborative inhibition. Some results suggest that a contribution of retrieval inhibition is possible, but we failed to find any evidence to suggest retrieval blocking and encoding specificity impact upon collaborative inhibition effects. In a separate analysis (27 effect sizes), moderating factors of postcollaborative memory performance were examined. Generally, collaborative remembering tends to benefit later individual retrieval. Moderator analyses suggest that reexposure to study material may be partly responsible for this postcollaborative memory enhancement. Some applied implications of the meta-analyses are discussed.
“A Meta-Analytic Review of Collaborative Inhibition and Postcollaborative Memory: Testing the Predictions of the Retrieval Strategy Disruption Hypothesis” by Marion, Stéphanie B.; and Thorley, Craig in Psychological Bulletin. Published online September 12 2016 doi:10.1037/bul0000071
