Research by Dr Celia Harris and colleagues demonstrated that the richness of the interactions within dyad members (couples), promote and boost memory performance or hamper it, depending on the strategies used (Harris, Barnier, Sutton, & Savage, 2018). Positive strategies included cueing, repetitions and providing a positive environment to the tasks. In contrast, disagreement between partners and correcting partners resulted in less collaborative performance, although this may not impact on final performance. This approach showed that communication among individuals take many forms which are not captured when only measuring the amount of information (i.e., how much) is generated. These different reminiscing styles are likely to have implications for the psychological wellbeing of partners, and will also be relevant if one of the partners experiences pathological changes in memory (e.g., in the context of mild cognitive impairment or the onset of dementia).
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders
Our Centre was funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate five key areas including belief formation, language, memory, person perception, and reading. This website is no longer actively maintained as the CCD concluded in 2018. But you can find out information about past projects, research highlights, publications, initiatives, and the people who worked with us.