The Role of Expertise in Collaborative Memory

We examined the effect of domain expertise on collaborative memory performance.  Expert pilots (flight instructors) and novice pilots (first year aviation students) were presented with simple and complex versions of aviation relevant scenarios.  Subjects were asked to recall the scenarios alone or in collaboration with another subject with the same level of expertise.  The novices obtained no benefit from collaboration, however collaborating experts recalled more than individuals (even when the individuals were pooled to form a nominal group).  This effect of collaborative facilitation in experts was especially pronounced for complex problems.  Analyses of verbal protocols collected during recall suggest that components of domain knowledge and collaborative skill differentially impacted experts' performance on the collaborative memory task.