Scientific study has shown that social remembering tends to be significantly less reliable than independent recall.
Scientific study has shown that social remembering tends to be significantly less reliable than independent recall.
A researcher recently took another look at her own previous findings and believes that long-time couples are likely an exception to that rule.
She and her colleagues first revisited simple memory tests. In the original experiment, couples were given groups of words to memorize.
The findings were that the pairs who had been together for a good amount of time didn’t seem impeded by one another’s participation when remembering what they’d studied.
They didn’t get better results than when they tackled the task alone, but they didn’t do worse, either.
Building on that, the team delved further and examined cases that provided greater insights into other potential strengths of interconnected memory.
While it didn’t seem to serve people well when recounting lists of events, it did help them fill in the gaps of what happened at specific ones.
Researchers narrowed down the ways in which tag-team recall is most helpful.
They include nailing down elusive names for things and making memories overall more vivid and multi-sensory.
Notable is that couples who collaborated did far better than those who displayed either passive or critical behavior.
