Group Remembering

Group Remembering –Similarity and Difference to Single Mind Memorizing

Although remembering is usually studied as a process within the individual mind, there has been increasing research interest on group remembering performance from the psychology literature (e.g., Hartwick et al., 1982; Paulus & Dzindolet, 1993; Weldon et al., 2000). Past studies show that the group remembers more than individuals when members collaborate instead of working alone to recall an event (e.g., Stephenson et al., 1983). Group recognition is also more accurate than individual recognition (Clark et al., 2000; Hinsz, 1990). Weldon and Bellinger investigated and compared memory as both an individual and a social process in studies of dyads (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997). Their results demonstrate that individual and collaborative recall revealed similar principles of memory on picture-superiority effect (the picture-superiority effect under graphic-encoding conditions was larger in collaborative recall than in individual recall in their experiments), a level-of-processing effect, and hypermnesia, suggesting that collaborative recall may be viewed as largely a product of individual recall although it is not the sum of the individual recalls.

Studies have shown that group processing does not always have a positive impact on memory recall. Weldon and Bellinger (1997) observed significant impairment in their study of collaborative recall in dyads, a phenomenon they termed collaborative inhibition. Basden et al. also observed collaborative inhibition in their study of four-member groups (Basden et al., 2001). Interacting groups are reported to produce fewer ideas than nominal groups in brainstorming studies, indicating that collaboration inhibits productivity (e.g., Bouchard & Hare, 1970). It is believed in the literature that collaboration can produce retrieval interference (e.g., Anderson & Neely, 1996) and retrieval interference attributes to collaborative inhibition as it can be disruptive for the individual’s subjective organization and retrieval strategies hearing other group members recall the material (e.g., Finlay et al., 2000).

As our memory is limited, it is crucial in knowledge work that knowledge can be embedded into cognitive artifacts so to enhance our abilities to recall and replicate successful practices. Supporting group remembering with computer technology is important especially when groups collaborate through Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), namely, computer supported collaboration. Computer Support Collaborative Work (CSCW) is an interdisciplinary domain at the intersection between computer science, telecommunication, industrial, organizational and social psychology, and sociology. A key term defined in CSCW, groupware refers to the set of software tools that support group work in a common task and provide shared interfaces for groups to work with (Johansen, 1988). Providing archived information of the collaboration process, group memory technology helps group members to rediscover or learn new things (e.g., discovering how the final decision was made or why different decisions were made), and helps outsiders of the group gain knowledge of what others have gone through in order to generate knowledge in a real collaboration case. Group memory technology plays the role of knowledge artifact in knowledge work providing a road map of the process that group members went through in generating the knowledge. It facilitates these knowledge connections by capturing the context of the process in addition to the process itself.

How groupware to be implemented to alleviate or eliminate collaboration inhibition (collaboration inhibition is termed by Weldon & Bellinger, 1997) thus enhancing group remembering performance is a question that interests not only human-computer interaction literature but also psychology literature on memory especially remembering as a social process. Its answer will contribute to not only theoretical understanding of group memory technology as artifacts that shape cognition and collaboration and of designing meaningful group memory technology in groupware in human-computer interaction paradigm, but also psychological understanding of the nature of cognition beyond the limits inherent in considering cognitive processes as the content or activity of only the individual mind in psychology paradigm. A Review of Human Memory — SIGCHI Bulletin