Collaborative Recall Changes the Global Organization of Memory: A Representational Similarity Analysis of Social Influences on Individual and Collective Memory Organization

Abstract

The last 25 years of research have revealed that recalling the past with others changes memory. A key finding is that former group members show increased memory overlap or collective memory. Beyond memory content, we ask whether collaborative recall changes the organization of memory. How we organize information has far-reaching consequences on learning and remembering, and research has produced sophisticated theories and measures of memory organization when people recall alone. However, research remains sparse on how social influences shape memory organization. Furthermore, studies document local changes only (small segments in recall), raising the question whether collaboration produces global changes (positional relations among all items) in memory organization that can inform how people construct memory narratives. It is also unclear whether collaboration affects memory organization differently for different emotional contents despite the well-established influence of emotion on memory. We address these questions by focusing on two important advances. Using representational similarity analysis, we seek a deeper understanding of collaborative recall on memory organization at the global level and how emotional valence influences memory organization. Comparing two collaborative recall sequences, collaborative-collaborative-individual and individual-collaborative-individual, with individual-individual-individual (baseline sequence), we replicated better memory for emotional than neutral content and collective memory for content. Novel to our aims, collaborative recall changed global memory organization, both at individual and collective levels and for neutral and emotional contents. These quantitative indices for holistic changes in memory organization reveal the depth of social influences in reshaping memory, with implications for remembering, beliefs, education, and national narratives.