Communication mode, affect and recall.

Investigated whether there is an interaction effect of communication mode on the joint recall of affect-laden vs affect-free prose. It was expected that joint recall of a passage of affect-laden prose would be less when the interaction was in an audio-only mode than in a face-to-face condition and that joint recall of affect-free prose would be higher in an audio-only medium than in a face-to-face condition. 64 female undergraduates were randomly assigned to pairs. Each member of the pair individually memorized a vivid, affect-laden narration or a more factual, logical popular science article, and then, together with the partner, jointly recalled the passage. A 2nd passage of the opposite type was then memorized and recalled. The joint memorization sessions took place over face-to-face and audio-only communication modes. Findings indicate that the face-to-face mode showed significantly greater recall than the audio-only mode and that the narrative was recalled better than the popular science passage. The overall effect of mode, whereby face-to-face recall gave better results over both passages, suggests that, contrary to expectations, the face-to-face mode generally supports enhanced recall in a joint-recall task. (French abstract) (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)