Net effect of memory collaboration: How is collaboration affected by factors such as friendship, gender and age?

The purpose of the study was to investigate explicit spatial and verbal col laborative memory performance. Factors such as friendship, age and gender w ere chosen for ecological and theoretical reasons. In Experiment I friendsh ip and age were studied. The task was to retrieve the location of 25 pictur es, which were presented in a 5 x 5-matrix grid. All participants retrieved once individually and once dyadically. Dyads were compared to the predicte d base line, i.e., the pooled score from two participants working on their own (the same participants as in the dyad). Based on cognitive development aspects and collaboration data, it was predicted that the young collaborati ng dyads would not be able to reduce the net negative effects of collaborat ion to the same extent as older dyads. The findings revealed that, (1) dyad ic collaboration affected spatial memory performance negatively, i.e., net negative effects of collaboration; (2) older (15-years-old), as opposed to young (7-years-old) dyads, reduced the net negative effects of collaboratio n and; (3) friend dyads, regardless of age, were able to reduce the net neg ative effect. In experiment 2, gender differences were studied in two expli cit memory tasks. The purpose was to investigate if earlier findings of col laboration can be generalised to another ecological aspect of group composi tion, i.e., gender. Gender differences were studied at individual and group level. The results suggest that gender related memory differences exist on an individual and dyadic level in terms of absolute scores. Women remember explicit memory tasks to a greater degree than men. No main effect was fou nd for gender in collaboration. i.e., both genders suffered compared to pre dicted potential.