Together we lose or gain: Ongoing and enduring impacts of collaboration in episodic memory of emotional DRM lists

When using thematically related stimuli with different emotional valences, whether collaboration can bring ongoing and lasting benefits and detriments to episodic memory remains unclear. Aiming to address the issue, the current study innovatively adopted theme-relevant DRM lists with positive, neutral, and negative emotion valences as memory materials. After learning the materials, participants conducted Recall 1 and Recall 2, each containing two sequential memory tasks: the first was the item recall task to recall the studied words and the second was the source retrieval task to recall the colors of the studied words. Participants performed Recall 1 either alone or with a partner, while Recall 2 was conducted individually. Recall 1 confirmed both the detrimental (collaborative inhibition) and beneficial (error pruning and false memory reduction) effects of collaboration for item recall, which manifested the processes of strategy disruption and strategy reversion. Recall 2 reported only benefits, as the post-collaborative recall benefit was recorded in both memory tasks and the false memory reduction appeared in item recall, which provided telling evidence of the mechanisms put forward by the RSDH. In addition, these effects were not sensitive to the emotional valence of DRM lists, which indicated similar strategy disruption and reversion processes between emotional and neutral DRM lists. These results were discussed in terms of the RSDH and other possible accounts. Directions exploring more influential factors in the future and implications are put forward.