Group collaboration in recognition memory

Group collaboration was examined in item and associative recognition. The p resent study distinguishes between group effects versus collaborative proce sses and defines the latter as interactive information exchange among group members. By that definition, many group effects do not involve collaborati on. For example, group performance can exceed individual performance by poo ling the increased resources of the group. Specifically, a group advantage can be obtained by deferring to a majority vote or to the group's best memb er. For both item and associative recognition, a group advantage was obtain ed that could not be accounted for by resource pooling. Collaborative facil itation was shown reliably in recognizing targets but not for rejecting dis tracters.