Your words are my words: Effects of acting together on encoding

Abstract

Social influences on action and memory are well established. However, it is unknown how acting together affects the incidental encoding of information. The present study asked whether coactors encode information that is relevant to a partner's task, but irrelevant to their own task. In Experiment 1, participants performed a categorization task alone and together, followed by a surprise free recall test where they were asked to recall items from the categorization task. Recall was better not only for items that participants had responded to themselves, but also for items that their coactor had responded to, than for items that had not required a response. The same results were found in Experiment 2, even though financial incentives motivated participants to only encode words they had responded to themselves. Together, the findings suggest that performing tasks together can modulate how information relevant to coactors is processed. Shared task representations may act as a vehicle for establishing shared memories.