Social processing improves recall performance

One recent theory (Dunbar, 2003) has highlighted the importance that processing social information might have had on the evolution of human cognition. Based on an analysis of that theory, researchers predicted that processing information in a social manner would improve recall performance in comparison with nonsocial processing. In order to test this prediction, three experiments were conducted in which participants studied 30-item word lists that were composed of common character traits (Experiment 1) or common category exem-plars (Experiments 2 and 3). Next, participants reviewed 5 list items that were purportedly recalled by either a group member or the computer. Finally, after a brief distractor task, participants were asked to complete an individual recall test for all of the items on the original 30-item list. Of primary interest was recall performance for the list items that were purportedly recalled by either another participant or the computer. We observed that recall performance for list items purportedly recalled by another participant was superior to that for items that were recalled by the computer.