Brown-Schmidt Sarah, Jaeger Christopher Brett, Lord Kaitlin, Benjamin Aaron S
Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN, 37203, USA.
School of Law, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2024 Sep 5. doi: 10.3758/s13421-024-01630-8.
Individuals can take on various roles in conversation. Some roles are more active, with the participant responsible for guiding that conversation in pursuit of the group's goals. Other roles are more passive, like when one is an overhearer. Classic accounts posit that overhearers do not form conversational common ground because they do not actively participate in the communication process. Indeed, empirical findings demonstrate that overhearers do not comprehend conversation as well as active participants. Little is known, however, about long-term memory for conversations in overhearers. Overhearers play an important role in legal settings and dispute resolution, and it is critical to understand how their memory differs in quality and content from active participants in conversation. Here we examine - for the first time - the impact of one's conversational role as a speaker, addressee, or overhearer on subsequent memory for conversation. Data from 60 participants recalling 60 conversations reveal that after a brief delay, overhearers recall significantly less content from conversation compared to both speakers and addressees, and that the content they do recall is less accurately sourced to its actual contributor. Mnemonic similarity is higher between active conversational participants than between active participants and overhearers. These findings provide key support for the hypothesis that the process of forming common ground in interactive conversation shapes and supports memory for that conversation.
在对话中，个体可以扮演各种角色。有些角色更为主动，参与者负责引导对话以实现群体目标。其他角色则较为被动，比如偷听者。传统观点认为，偷听者不会形成对话的共同基础，因为他们不积极参与交流过程。事实上，实证研究结果表明，偷听者对对话的理解不如积极参与者。然而，对于偷听者对对话的长期记忆，我们知之甚少。偷听者在法律场景和争端解决中起着重要作用，了解他们的记忆在质量和内容上与对话中的积极参与者有何不同至关重要。在此，我们首次研究了作为说话者、听话者或偷听者的对话角色对后续对话记忆的影响。来自60名参与者回忆60段对话的数据显示，经过短暂延迟后，与说话者和听话者相比，偷听者回忆起的对话内容明显更少，而且他们所回忆的内容对实际贡献者的来源定位也不太准确。积极的对话参与者之间的记忆相似性高于积极参与者与偷听者之间的记忆相似性。这些发现为以下假设提供了关键支持：在互动对话中形成共同基础的过程塑造并支持了对该对话的记忆。
