Q121943

Science Summary

Celia Harris, working with others at Macquarie University, did a study on the memories of individuals versus couples. They found that, while couple did more poorly on recalling lists together, they did remember vivid events that they had experienced together (Harris, C.). They found that social interactions can have benefits in three ways: 1. New information for each individual would appear, 2. Much more vivid descriptions of memories would occur, and 3. The information would introduce a new view on the member to the other individual (Harris, C.). They also determined that couples with were more together, rather than passive or critical, did better as well as those who had rated themselves as having high intimacy did better (Harris, C.). Also, they discovered that older couples had a more difficult time recalling autobiographical memories, “recollections that a person includes in an account of his or her own life” (Boyd p.180). This connects to the book because they are mainly discussing how couples have better episodic memory, “the type of declarative memory that records events as they have been subjectively experienced” (Boyd p.174). Memories can be very tricky and sometimes unreliable, however, I think it is good that we are starting to see that couples can have greater benefits with remembering events than just an individual.

References: Wood, Samuel E., Ellen R. Green. Wood, and Denise Roberts. Boyd. //Mastering the World of Psychology//. Fourth ed. Boston: Pearson/ Allyn and Bacon, 2011. Print.

Harris, C., Barnier, A., Sutton, J., & Keil, P. (2014). Couples as socially distributed cognitive systems: Remembering in everyday social and material contexts Memory Studies, 7 (3), 285-297

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