title: Learning and Remembering with Others: The Key Role of Retrieval in Shaping Group Recall and Collective Memory.
abstract: People frequently collaborate to learn and remember information, and this may help groups create a shared representation of the world (i.e.,collective memories). However, contrary to intuitions, collaboration also lowers group recall levels. Such impairment occurs regardless of whether people collaborate when first experiencing, or encoding, an event (thecollaborative encoding deficit), or when retrieving, or remembering, the event (thecollaborative inhibition effect).In understanding how collaboration impairs group recall and enhances collective or shared memories it remains unknown as to where collaboration exerts the greatest influence - at encoding or at retrieval - to shape these distinct phenomena. The current study simultaneously compared collaboration at these two stages and revealed the power of collaborative retrieval. Collaboration impaired the group recall product at both time points, but especially so at retrieval. Furthermore, only collaborative retrieval played a significant role in the formation of collective memories.
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California.
authors.forename: Sarah J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Barber
authors.affiliation: Stony Brook University.
authors.forename: Suparna
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rajaram
authors.affiliation: The New School for Social Research.
authors.forename: Ethan B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Fox
keywords: collaboration; collaborative encoding deficit; collaborative inhibition; collective memory; human memory