COMMUNICATION, LEARNING, AND RETRIEVAL IN TRANSACTIVE MEMORY-SYSTEMS

A laboratory experiment examined the impact of communication during le arning and during recall on collective recall. Dating couples and dyad s of strangers worked together to learn and later recall words in six different knowledge categories. Consistent with past work on transacti ve memory (Wegner, Erber, & Raymond, 1991), dating couples recalled mo re words than strangers when not able to communicate during learning. This effect reversed when they could communicate during learning: Stra ngers recalled more words than dating couples. Also, dyads in the same communication condition during learning and during recall remembered more words than dyads that learned and later recalled in different com munication conditions. The data support the proposition that communica tion can have important effects on the manner in which knowledge is le arned and recalled in transactive memory systems. (C) 1998 Academic Pr ess.