Collaborative recall in married and unacquainted dyads

Thirty younger couples between the ages of 19 and 36 (M = 26.0, SD = 3.5) and thirty older couples between the ages of 56 and 85 (M = 67.4, SD = 5.3) were tested on story recall, word recall, and a referential naming task. Each individual worked with the spouse and with a stranger of the other gender so that collaborative performance could be compared between familiar and unfamiliar dyads. Although participants anticipated that higher levels of recall performance would be obtained when they worked with a familiar partner, this expectation was not supported. Older men, but not older women recalled less information than younger adults. Younger dyads were found to be more efficient communicators than older dyads in the referential naming task.

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