Sjolund Lori A, Erdman Matthew, Kelly Jonathan W
Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, W112 Lagomarcino Hall, Ames, IA, 50011-3180, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2014 Aug;42(6):876-85. doi: 10.3758/s13421-014-0407-0.
Collaborative inhibition refers to the finding that pairs of people working together to retrieve information from memory-a collaborative group-often retrieve fewer unique items than do nominal pairs, who retrieve individually but whose performance is pooled. Two experiments were designed to explore whether collaborative inhibition, which has heretofore been studied using traditional memory stimuli such as word lists, also characterizes spatial memory retrieval. In the present study, participants learned a layout of objects and then reconstructed the layout from memory, either individually or in pairs. The layouts created by collaborative pairs were more accurate than those created by individuals, but less accurate than those of nominal pairs, providing evidence for collaborative inhibition in spatial memory retrieval. Collaborative inhibition occurred when participants were allowed to dictate the order of object placement during reconstruction (Exp. 1), and also when object order was imposed by the experimenter (Exp. 2), which was intended to disrupt the retrieval processes of pairs as well as of individuals. Individual tests of perspective taking indicated that the underlying representations of pair members were no different than those of individuals; in all cases, spatial memories were organized around a reference frame aligned with the studied perspective. These results suggest that inhibition is caused by the product of group recall (i.e., seeing a partner's object placement), not by the process of group recall (i.e., taking turns choosing an object to place). The present study has implications for how group performance on a collaborative spatial memory task may be optimized.
共同从记忆中检索信息的两人小组（协作组）往往比名义组检索到的独特项目更少，名义组是各自检索但将表现合并计算。设计了两项实验来探究协作抑制（此前一直使用诸如单词列表等传统记忆刺激进行研究）是否也存在于空间记忆检索中。在本研究中，参与者学习了物体的布局，然后单独或成对地从记忆中重建该布局。协作对创建的布局比个体创建的更准确，但比名义对创建的布局准确性低，这为空间记忆检索中的协作抑制提供了证据。当参与者在重建过程中被允许决定物体放置顺序时（实验1），以及当物体顺序由实验者设定时（实验2），都会出现协作抑制，实验2旨在干扰对和个体的检索过程。个体的换位思考测试表明，对成员的潜在表征与个体的没有差异；在所有情况下，空间记忆都是围绕与所研究视角对齐参考框架进行组织的。这些结果表明，抑制是由群体回忆的产物（即看到伙伴的物体放置）引起的，而不是由群体回忆的过程（即轮流选择要放置的物体）引起的。本研究对如何优化协作空间记忆任务中的群体表现具有启示意义。
