Group recall: The picture-superiority effect with shared and unshared information

Previous research has examined how group characteristics can affect the pooling of unshared information (G. M. Wittenbaum & G. Stasser, 1996), but it has not explored the effect of the information itself. The present study investigated how representation of information (i.e., pictures vs. words) can affect the recall of shared and unshared information. Participants studied shared pictures, shared words, unshared pictures, and unshared words and then did 2 group recalls. On Trial 1, groups recalled more shared than unshared information and more pictures than words. On Trial 2, groups recalled more unshared pictures than unshared words, but no difference was found between the recall of shared pictures and shared words. Information salience and group coordination are discussed.