How emotion and production effects reveal the dynamics of dialogue memory

Common ground is crucial to ensure the effectiveness and harmony of a dialogue. However, even if the information forming the common ground is, by its very nature, shared between two collaborating partners, biases related to individual processes (production and emotional effects) may shape its accessibility in memory for each partner. The aim of this work was to examine the respective roles of individual and collective processes in dialogue memory by showing that they are implemented differently at the beginning versus the end of the grounding process. Using an adapted referential communication task, we developed three complementary studies to investigate memory for the content (i.e., what was said) and source (i.e., who said it) of information through the study of repeated reference to a set of referents. The results confirmed that individual processes impact memory for information provided at the beginning of the interaction, whereas no significant effect was observed for information provided at the end of the interaction. In contrast, the role of each partner (director vs. matcher) in the collaborative task appears to have an influence on memory, as the director enjoyed greater conceptual pact accessibility and better source memory, highlighting the collective processes at play. Taken together, these results enhance current understanding of the dynamic by which collective and individual processes contribute to common ground construction during dialogue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).