MEMORY DISTORTION IN GROUP RECALL

Earlier we reported (Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997) that, in comparison with nominal groups (three people tested individually), thr ee-person collaborative groups recalled fewer presented words but intr uded more nonpresented words. In the present research, Experiment 1 sh owed that when presented words were associatively related to critical nonpresented words, collaboration inhibited recall of presented words but did not influence recall of critical nonpresented words. Experimen t 2 showed that with categorized lists, recall of high taxonomic frequ ency critical nonpresented words was greater for collaborative groups than for nominal groups. Collaboration did not inhibit recall of prese nted words, presumably because guessing supplemented recall in collabo rative groups. Greater false recall in collaborative than in nominal g roups appears to result from activation of superordinate-to-item assoc iations rather than item-to-item associations.