The effects of manipulating salience of expertise and membership change on transactive memory

Transactive memory is a model of division of labor for group memory. Each member is an expert in some area relevant to the memory task. Each expert focuses his or her efforts on encoding information within his or her area of expertise, and avoids duplicating the efforts of other experts. At retrieval, members acquiesce to the relevant expert.; Study 1 examined whether directing participants' attention to member expertise would affect duplication of effort and acquiescence after several trials of interaction. Participants in the “labeling” condition were told each member's expertise before beginning the first trial, and asked to evaluate each member's expertise in each area after each trial. In the “evaluation of expertise” condition, participants were just asked to evaluate each member in each area after each trial. In the “no intervention” condition, participants just performed the memory task. The labeling and evaluation conditions had less duplication of effort at encoding than the no intervention condition. At retrieval, the labeling condition had more acquiescence than the evaluation or no intervention conditions. The roles of perceived expertise and uncertainty in perceptions of expertise were also explored.; Study 2 examined the effects of membership change on transactive memory. Four alternatives were tested: (1) when ONLY membership changes, there is no breakdown in transactive memory, (2) experts are not certain they have the same relative expertise in the new group, and therefore fail to focus their efforts within their areas of expertise after membership change, (3) members do not know who is the expert after membership change, and therefore duplicate each other's efforts at encoding, and (4) members do not know who the expert is and therefore do not acquiesce at retrieval. Participants completed seven trials of a memory task. In the NO CHANGE condition, all seven trials were with the same group. In the CHANGE condition, groups were disbanded and entirely new groups created after the fourth trial. Overall, CHANGE groups exhibited no breakdown in transactive memory, and some indicators suggest that membership change improved transactive memory. Transfer of strategy is implicated as the most likely reason for this finding.