A Conceptual and Empirical Framework for the Social
Distribution of Cognition: The Case of Memory
L. Marsh, Cognitive Systems Research
vol.9, pp. 33-51, 2008
소프트웨어 에이전트
2009. 05.22
이승현
Contents
• Introduction
• Memory for distributed cognition
• Social influences on Memory
– Transactive memory
– Collaborative recall
– Social contagion
• Experiments
• Conclusion
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Introduction
• Paradigms in human cognition: “embedded”, “distributed”,
“extended”
• Human cognitive processing =
brain + nervous system + environment(social, technological
resources)
• Neural system does not operate in causal isolation from their
environments.
• Distributed cognition framework offers new perspectives on
social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the
psychology of memory
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Memory for Distributed Cognition
• Autobiographical memory
– Content of ongoing activities of remembering which we have
sculpted(self conceptions)
• ex) decision making, choices, values, etc.
– This is not simply recalling episodes from one’s past
– It is affected by our broader ongoing cognitive lives
• Triggering for and influencing on the memory process
• Disrupting or contaminating influence on individual memory
• Experiences
– Shared experiences
• Accidentally shared
• Shared because acted together
– Unshared experiences
• Retrieval
– Isolated remembering / collaborative remembering
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Three dimensions
Memory for Distributed Cognition
• Triggering Thesis
– Remembering takes place inside individuals
– It is initiated at the encoding or the retrieval phase by social
phenomena
• Social Manifestation Thesis
– Remembering takes place inside individuals
– It can only be manifested or realized when individuals engaged in
part of social group
• Group Mind Thesis
– Remembering is cognitive process when group themselves engaged
in
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Social Influences on Memory
• Studies on social influences on memory from cognitive
psychology
• Three research tradition
– Transactive memory
– Collaborative recall
– Social contagion
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Transactive Memory
Social Influences on Memory
• Transactive memory
: “Set of individual memory systems in combination with the
communication that takes place between individuals’’ (Wegner, 1987,
p.186).
• Definition
– Memory = individual memory system + communication
– Shared memory system
• Example
“A couple discussing a shared party experience”
• Limitation
– Applied with non-autobiographical stimuli
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Transactive Memory
Social Influences on Memory
• Features
– Recalled memory > Sum of individual memory
– Possible with strangers
ex) casual acquaintances, people thrown together by chance
– More efficient amongst people who repeatedly remember
together(The more communication, chances are the more memory)
ex) couples, families, or colleagues
• Successful relationship
– Differentiation of information: more information
– Integration of information: new information
• Experiments(Wegner, 1991)
– People in long-term relationships perform better
– Collaboration during learning impairs the recall of couples compared
to strangers
– Because pairs are not allowed to use their own structure
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Transactive Memory
Social Influences on Memory
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Collaborative Recall
Social Influences on Memory
• Collaborative recall
– Measuring effect of collaboration on recall
• Experiments(Basden, Bryber, and Thomas(1997))
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Collaborative Recall
Social Influences on Memory
• Effects
– 1st recall (amount of words recalled)
Individual < Collaborative group < Nominal group
 collaborative inhibition
– 2nd recall
Recalled individually < Recalled in a group
(items that were introduced by another group member)
• Result
– Recalling information in a group setting interrupts people’s
individual retrieval strategies, making them less efficient
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Collaborative recall(feature)
Social Influences on Memory
• Nature of group
– Type of collaboration
• Turn-taking (Basden, 2000) vs More interactive collaboration(Finlay et al., 2000)
– Way of make-up
• Groups of acquaintances vs Group of strangers(Anderson, 1995)
• Married dyads vs Unacquainted dyads(Cue et al., 2006)
– Roles adopted by group members
• Dominant narrator vs Egalitarian conversation
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Social Contagion
Social Influences on Memory
• Social contagion paradigm
– Measuring impact on an individual’s memory of recalling the same
event with one or more other people
• Experiment(Mead et al., 2002; Roediger et al., 2001)
– Procedure
• 1st : Learn material together with a confederate
• 2nd: Recall with the confederate
• 3rd : Recall again individually
– Variation
• A slightly different version of the same material
– Measurement
• Focuses on the amount of correct information that is forgotten and the amount of
incorrect information that is remembered
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Social Contagion
Social Influences on Memory
• Effect
– People came to falsely remember items when they were suggested
by a confederate during collaborative recall
• Result
– Participants incorporated both correct and incorrect information into
their recall following group collaboration
• Source Monitoring Framework(Johnson et al., 1993)
– People are often not aware of where information has come from, and
may wrongly attribute information provided by someone else to the
original event
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Social Contagion(Feature)
Social Influences on Memory
• Way of presenting(Meade and Roediger, 2002)
– Real confederates > Written summary
• Presence of dissenters(Walther et al., 2002)
– Weakened social contagion effect when there is a dissenter in a
group
• Type of confederates(French et al., 2006)
– Romantic partner > stranger
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Experiment 1(Collaborative recall)
• Subject
– 69 university students from University of New South Wales
• Object
– Death of one of Australian celebrity(Steve Irwin)
• Procedure
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Experiment 1(Collaborative recall)
• Result
– Content of recollections
• Group members who recalled collaboratively minimized their own personal
emotional reaction
• Group members who recalled collaboratively minimized the significance of the event
– Way of reevaluating their reaction
• Participants who discussed the event had even further reduced their ratings of how
shocked they had been when they heard the news
– Confidence level
• Participants who collaborated were more confident about the semantic details of the
event than participants who collaborated individually
• Conclusion
– Collaborative recall can influence people’s memory
– This can be extended to more complex and personally relevant
memories
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Experiments 2(Social contagion)
• Subject
– 48 students from University of New South Wales(28 female, 18 male)
• Object
– Significant autobiographical events
ex) 19th birthday party, HSC exam, school graduation dance, first day of university
• Procedure
– Subjects describe their own significant event
– Confederates describe described the event they have listened
– Subjects describe their event again
• Variation
– Confederates put contagion item
ex) “You thought that this was a big turning point in your life”
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Experiments 2(Social contagion)
• Result
– Contagion effect for memories
• 30% of participants included in their final recall at least one social
contagion idea unit for at least one event
• ex1) including exact piece of information which was given by
confederates
• ex2) subtle change: 30 people  70 people
• Conclusion
– Collaboration with a virtual stranger is sufficient to slightly alter the
later remembering of participants’ private experiences
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Experiments 3(Collaborative Recall)
• Subject
– Former students of Sydney high school at 20 year school reunion
• Object
– Memorable events from high school
– ex) a football match, a school musical, etc.
• Assumption
– Student who has kept contacting to other students much more
collaborative memory than who has not
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Experiments 3(Collaborative Recall)
• Result
– Student who occasionally contacted
: Lack of details in remembering
– Student who regularly contacted(married one of classmates)
: Described many events in great detail
– Student who regularly contacted(had friends in the football team)
: Described the football match in great detail
• Conclusion
– Former students had different experiences at the time and different
memory styles now
– Sharing of experiencing and the sharing of remembering seemed to
flavor the quantity and quality of their recollections of school events
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Conclusion
• Remembering is not just internal process by individuals
• Learning and reconceiving our memory is integrated process
which is affected by social environment such as people around
us.
• Application?
– MAS system
– Conversational system
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Thank you for your attention