Written Critique of a Research Article - Essay Example

Sarah J. B, Suparna R, and Ethan B. F. . Learning and Remembering with Others: The Key Role of Retrieval in Shaping Group Recall and Collective Memory. Social Cognition. 30(1), 121-132. Article Abstract People frequently collaborate to learn and remember information, and this may help groups create shared representations of the world (i.e., collective memories). However, contrary to intuitions, collaboration also lowers group recall levels. Such impairment occurs regardless of whether people collaborate when first experiencing, or encoding, an event (the collaborative encoding deficit), or when retrieving, or remembering, the event (the collaborative inhibition effect).

In understanding how collaboration impairs group recall and enhances shared, or collective, memories it remains unknown as to where collaboration exerts the greatest influence-at encoding or at retrieval-to shape these distinct phenomena. The current study simultaneously compared collaboration at these two stages and revealed the power of collaborative retrieval. Collaboration impaired the group recall product at both time points, but especially so at retrieval. Furthermore, only collaborative retrieval played a significant role in the formation of collective memories.

Critique of the Article “Learning and Remembering with Others” The article “Learning and remembering with others…” is about experiments in psychology to investigate the ability of an individual to learn and remember when in isolation given the fact that the setting in the real world is that memory process is social. Collaboration is a wide spread idea and instrumental in helping individuals in construction of a shared representation of the world, it is at times detrimental to a group’s ability to recall.

Sarah B, Suparna R and Ethan F sought to analyze the extent to which collaborative encoding will affect the recalling of information in a group. Although collaborative encoding has an effect in recalling information, developments from memory theory gives suggestions of powerful linkages being present between attention and memorizing. Hence maintaining something for a short period of time is similar to bringing the same item to focus, and therefore the research is insufficient to reach to the conclusion.

The authors of the article involved 180 undergraduate students from Stony Brook University including 45 strangers who were to encode on an individual basis and at the same time encode collaboratively. Both the students and students were not able to bring out sufficient results due to the fact that in the process of encoding, each individual in a group is able to develop and organize information in an idiosyncratic manner. Therefore and individual in a group with set memory will definitely eliminate collaborative inhibition.

One-hundred ninety five nouns were generated from MRC Psycholinguistic Database and they were unrelated. Words containing four to seven letters and one to one hundred per million word frequency, and four hundred to seven hundred in consistency, were used in the experiment. All these words were combined in a sixty five triads that were unrelated. The procedure used involved creating sentences from word triads in such a way that the first triad word should come earlier than the second word, which also comes earlier that the third word.

An example is words such as bandages, cousin and boat. The words can be written in the form: the bandages on the arms of my cousin came off while he was on the boat. The author, in carrying out collaborative encoding conditions, involved the participants by making them work in various triads while altering the starting, continuing and the finishing of sentences. The person conducting the experiment had to designate the participant who was to add the specific part of a sentence and the order of participation rotated round in equilibrium.

There was no imposing of time limit although most individuals took much time as compared to collaboration. All the participants had the responsibility of solving maze within a period of ten minutes. During group memory test, the participants were able to complete in less than ten minutes and in the final individual memory, the participants had to complete a free recall test within ten minutes. The results showed a significant effect on the retrieval in the nominal groups which outperformed collaborative groups based on the conditions of encoding and retrieval.

The findings from the journal by Sarah B. et al (2012) indicate presence of collaborative inhibition following encoding on individual basis. Significant interactions were present during the encoding and retrieving of information in forming of memory. There was the presence of collaborative encoding deficit when an applicant was required to recall alone. The results also indicate that collaboration is damaging when it occurs during the process of retrieval. Despite having a deficit in collaborative encoding, use of collective recall, as brought out by the author, is essential because it is able to expose an individual to forgotten items.

If learning and remembering with the help of others is important, then, collaborative retrieval is vital in shaping group recall and overall collective memory formation of individuals. Use of collaborative retrieval is important in ensuring groups members are able to develop an overlapping and collective memory which serves as a basic need for human beings to experience common factors in their beliefs, perceptions, and memories of each other. This process is important in trying to understand why people believe in collaboration between familiar and unfamiliar people in the society and its beneficiaries to memory.