Conversational Memory

Conversational Memory The Effects of Time, Recall, Mode, and Memory Expectancies on Remembrances of Natural Conversations LAURA STAFFORD CYNTHIA S.BURGGRAF WILLIAM F. SHARKEY Ohio State University

Participants took part in a two-stage investigation examining the changes in memory for conversation over time. The impact of memory expectancy and mode of recall were also examined. Participants could recall only about 10% of their conversations immediately after the conversations. One month later this fipre had dropped to 4%. Examination of recall protocols revealed that after a one month delay, participantsrecalledless contentand reported more descriptive statements, made more inferences, and were less accurate than when they had recalled immediately.In addition, expectanciesabout memory and mode used to report recollections affected the amount and type of information reported. Finally, participants recalled more of their partner’s contributions to the conversations than their own contributions.

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EMORY is an integral component of communicative ability. To converse appropriately people must minimally rely on their memory for linguistic rules and grammars as well as topical information. Moreover, competent communicators must retrieve memories about specific events that occurred with particular others in order to devise trajectories for the likely directions that their conversations may take (Stafford & Daly, 1984). Laura Stafford(Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 1985)is anassistant professor in the Department of Communicationat The Ohio State University. CynthiaS. Burggraf(M.A., The Ohio State University, 1985)is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. William F. Sharkey (M.A., The Ohio State University, 1987) is a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University. Human CommunicationResearch, Vol. 14 No. 2, Winter 1987 203.229 o 1988 International CommunicationAssociation

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Realizing that memory serves such diverse functions, recognition and recall are often employed as dependent measures in social psychologyand communication studies (Berscheid,Graziano, Monson, & Dermer, 1976; Cegala, 1984; Nunnally, 1971), yet little is known about peoples’ memories for natural conversation. Moreover, a great deal of our general knowledge of memory comes from studies of stimuli such as nonsense syllablesor lists of trait adjectives (Goetz, Anderson, & Schallert, 1981; Graesser, 1980; Wanner, 1974). These studies are aimed at discovering principles of verbal learning and memory so predictions for memory for communication in interpersonal contexts are hard to make based upon this work. Conversational memory necessarily concerns a wider variety of cognitive, social, and relational skills as conversations involve informational,self-identity,and relational functions (see Clark & Delia, 1979). Recently, there has been a trend away from such stimuli toward more ecologically valid stimulus materials (Danks & Gluksberg, 1980; Neisser, 1982).This shift has been necessitated due to the recognition that “mechanisms of word and sentence perception are not fully adequate for understanding how larger units such as conversations and stories are processed” (Danks & Gluksberg, 1980, p. 392). Thus, in an effort to use more complex stimuli, stories or oral prose have been utilized as stimuli (Black, 1984; Graesser, 1980; Kintsch, 1974). However, conversations are more complex and ambiguous and less coherent than stories or oral prose (Gamst, 1982).Only a few studies (e.g., Benoit & Benoit, 1986; Keenan, MacWhinney, & Mayhew, 1977; MacWhinney,Keenan, & Reinke, 1982;Ross & Sicoly, 1979;Stafford& Daly, 1984)have assessed interactors’ recall for conversational events. However, the studies by Keenan and her colleagues (Keenan et a]., 1977; MacWhinney et al., 1982) and by Benoit and Benoit (1986) employed recognition or cued tasks as opposed to free recall procedures. Benoit and Benoit (1987) found participants to recall 15%and Stafford and Daly (1984) found that participants recalled, on the average, only 10%of their conversations. Also using free recall, Ross and Sicoly (1979) reported even lower recall scores. Given that relationships are created and negotiated over time, often with days or even weeks of disengagement between early interactions, long-term memory may be more critical for understanding the role of communication in relationship development and personality judgments. The purpose of this article is to extend Stafford and Daly’s (1984) investigation of short-term memory by examining interactors’ long-

Stafford, Burggraf, Sharkey / NATURAL CONVERSATIONS

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term memory for natural conversation.Specifically,we are interested in discovering how much interactors recall and what type of information interactors recall, using a free recall task, from a conversation they had participated in one month earlier. As discussed by Stafford and Daly (1984), even though the issues concerning the advantages of recall versus recognition tasks have not been resolved (Benoit & Benoit, 1987; Craik, 1979; Flexer & Tulving, 1978; Rabinowitz, Mandler, & Patterson, 1977), “free recall may more clearly tap mechanisms that operate during everyday conversations” (p. 381) and thus is utilized here.’ In addition, memory expectancies (instructionset) and mode of recall (oral or written) are examined for their influence on participants’ long-term memory for conversations. General models of memory indicate that long-term memory will be poor due to such processes as decay and interference (Goss, 1982; Hastie et al., 1980; Houston, 1981). Moreover, because decay and interference are enhanced by complex stimuli, these processes would probably play an even greater role in memory for natural conversations. This is because the interactional nature of conversations reflects a malleable and flexible processing resulting in more ambiguousand less coherent discourse than prose. Despite an awarenessof the complexity of natural conversation, and the debilitatingeffects of complex stimuli on memory, no studies have examined participants’ long-term memories for natural conversations and the few studiesthat have examined similar stimuli reported conflicting results. For example, Ross and Millson (1970)investigated students’recall of oral prose and found little loss of memory across time. Woodall and Folger (1985),in a study more closely related to memory for conversation, reported contrasting findings. In this study, gestures co-occurring with content were examined for their potential impact on memory for conversational events at immediateand seven-daytime intervals. Participants recalled significantly less at the seven-day cued recall test than they did at immediate recall times. The results indicated that memory for conversations decays over time, even with the rehearsal provided by a shortterm cued recall test. The conflictingfindingsbetween the two studies may be explained by comparing the types of stimulus materials used. Ross and Millson (1970)introduced a simplification mechanism in the form of a narrative grammar, which is missing in most casual conversations. Narrative grammars have been shown to improve memory of specific events (Bower, 1976; Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Rumelhart, 1977; Stein &

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Negworski, 1978),and conversations are also better recalled when they adhere to a narrative grammar (Gamst, 1982). Although a developing perspective suggests that whole conversations may be viewed as meaningful cognitive units (Hurtig, 1977; Kintsch, 1972; Winograd, 1977),naturally occurring conversations seldom display the structures found in stories (Levinson, 1981).Even adherents of the “conversational grammar” perspective recognize that discourse is not based on temporal relations, but is rather based on semantic relations (Halliday & Hanson, 1976) that are considerably more ambiguous and flexible. Ambiguous stimuli are more susceptible to decay (Gamst, 1982),and, therefore, it follows that long-term memory for naturally occurring conversations would be lower than long-term memory for oral prose. Thus Woodall and Folger’s (1985) findings are probably the more adequate predictors of long-term memory for natural conversation. However, Woodall and Folger’s (1985)participants viewed videotaped conversations and were not asked to recall information from a conversation in which they had taken part, thus generalizations to participants’ memories for natural conversations are difficult to make. Despite the lack of previous investigations of long-term memory for natural conversations, results such as those cited above, along with general findings related to memory, suggest that long-term conversational memory will be poor. Turning to an examination of memory quality, several areas of related literature yield some consistent expectations about the type of information that will be recalled. These areas are attribution studies, investigations of person memory, and discussions of the role of small talk in interpersonal relationship development. In its most basic form, attribution theory attempts to explain the way in which people assign causal explanations to phenomena. Attribution research focusing on social interaction initially aimed at discovering correlates of attributional accuracy, however, methodological difficulties (such as the imprecision of instruments used to assess personality traits) soon prompted researchers to shift their attention to the processes involved when making attributions. A great deal of research has examined perceptual biases common during impression formation (McArthur& Post, 1977;Pryor & Kriss, 1977;Ross,Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977; Taylor & Fiske, 1975), the stability of initial impressions (Brunner, 1958; Heider, 1958; McCall & Simmons, 1966; Rosenberg & Jones, 1972;Stephan, Berscheid, & Walster, 1971),and the conditions under which initial impressions might change (Luchins,


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1957,1958; Mayo & Crockett, 1964; Rosenkrantz & Crockett, 1965). Perhaps the most common finding from these studies is that social actors tend to make dispositionalattributions while failingto remember the specific events that triggered the attribution (Ross,1977).Although this may indeed be the case, the memory protocols employed by attribution researchers tended to be either cued recall tests or closedended inference conditions. Thus we know little about peoples’ actual recall or open-ended inferences following social interaction. As Wyer and Carlston (1979,p. 80) stated, “open-endedinference is possibly the most common outside of the psychological lab, but is also the least often studied inside.” At this point, little is known about either the quality or the quantity of recall and/or open-ended inferences made during natural conversations. Yet the pervasivenessof the tendency to attribute dispositional characteristicsto others indicates that descriptors, rather than specific conversational events, are more likely to be recalled in the long run. A second related area of research also suggests that, over time, global impressions are more likely to be recalled than specific conversational events. In general, studies of person memory focus on the cognitive processes involved during social interaction. For example, in Wyer and Carlston’s(1979)model of associative memory, the memory structure is described as a network of concepts, each represented by a concept node, with varying associationsbetween the nodes. Behavioral cues are purported to stimulate a buildup of excitation at a particular node that will allow that concept to be recalled at a future date. Over time, the residual excitation subsides and the ability to recall the concept node that was stimulated is reduced. However, to the degree that residual excitation remains, the concept will be recalled in association with the stimuli that originally triggered its use. In the short term, specific events are often expected to be recalled. Predictions for long-termmemory differ, however. The expected shift in memory is due to the belief that when excitation builds at any particular memory node beyond a particular criterion level, it travels to related concept nodes and triggers their association with the stimulus person or event. As excitationtriggers more general or abstract concept nodes, it becomes more likely that these concepts will be recalled in the long term because the more general concept nodes are used more often, maintain a higher level of residual excitation, and are, therefore, more easily triggered when attempting to recall a particular person or event. As trait descriptors are more commonly used and are more abstract than are

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specific behaviors, it is likely that over time social actors will recall their impressions of others rather than particular behaviors or events that stimulated the impressions. Also, it seems that more global summary statements may be recalled as specific information decays. Related to the issue of decay discussed earlier, it is also expected that in an effort to fill in the forgotten details of conversations, participants will make more additions to the conversation (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978).Indeed, this expectationis supported by person-memorystudies in which people add “memories” for events that did not occur (see White & Carlston, 1983; also see Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Stafford & Daly, 1984). An examinationof the available literature on small talk suggests that memory for impressionsrather than memory for specific events may be the goal of casual interaction as opposed to a flaw in the human condition. Knapp (1984) discussed the functions of small talk and suggested that the act of conversingis often a more important end than the exchange of information.Indeed the content of such conversations primarily functions to uncover topics of mutual interest for further discussion so that the participants can determine whether or not future interaction with the particular other is desired. It seems, then, the content of casual conversation may be secondary to the goal of sizing up the desire and potential for a future relationship. Even in more established relationships, casual conversation may be conducted for the purpose of maintaining a sense of fellowship more than for the purpose of information exchange. Thus it may be that the goal of casual interaction is either to draw impressionsor simply to relate to another and that long-termmemory of casual conversations may reflect such a goal by allowing interactors to recall impressions rather than specific actions. Support for Knapp’s (1984)discussion is seen in two investigationsof memory for direct versus indirect speech acts. Kemper (1980) investigated memory for the form and force of declarative and interrogative utterances to demonstrate that people “may be sensitive to the particular form of an indirect request or offer because it conveys pragmatic information about the interpersonal characteristics of the participants in a conversation”(p. 370). Kemper reported that experimental participants more accurately recalled the verbatim form of indirect (i.e., more polite) requests and offers than of direct assertions and queries. A second study also assessed participants’ memories for pragmatic information conveyed by speech acts. In this investigation,


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Kemper and Thissen (1981)supported the hypothesisthat speech acts that violated social conventionsfor relational deferencewould be better remembered than appropriate speech acts. Although these two studies did not assess the relative importance of content versus relational information, the consistency of the findings stresses the significance of relational information that social actors glean from their conversations and lends some credibility to Knapp’s speculation. In addition to the substantive issues discussed above, two methodological issues are also explored in this investigation: The effects of memory expectancies and recall mode (oral or written) on recall. Instruction set (memoryexpectancy)was explored in the original study and is extended here. The question asked is, does forewarning participants that they will be required to recall information affect the amount of information recalled? Other than Stafford and Daly’s (1984) investigation, previous studies on memory for conversationshave not manipulated memory expectancies. As Stafford and Daly discussed, “conceptually, the provision of a forewarning about memory requirements should establish a memory-expectancy or goal for the conversationalists”(p. 383).The presence of goals for memory may influence how information is stored and accessed (Higgins, McCann, & Fondacaro, 1982).The second question is, do differing types of forewarning affect the type of information remembered? That is, operating from a schema perspective differing goals may also lead people to organize, store, and access material differently (Bartlett,1932;Hastie et al., 1980; Higgins et al., 1982). (See Stafford & Daly, 1984,for a discussion of these issues.)In Stafford and Daly’s (1984)investigation,instruction set was found to influence both the amount and the type of memories. Participants who were instructed to try to remember their conversations accuratelyrecalled more information than both the participants who were instructed to form impressions of their conversations and the participants who were given no forewarning concerning memory. Staffordand Daly (1984)suggested the greater recall in the condition of direct forewarning as opposed toseither no instructions or instructions to form impressions highlights the nature of memory in conversational conditions. That is, individualswith no warning of a memory task may form memories in a similar manner to individuals who are forming impressions. It seems reasonable to suggest that a greater amount of content recall will again be facilitated by explicit instructions to recall the interaction.

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It seems obvious that due to the differences in the production of written and oral material (DeVito, 1%, 1966,1%7; Dillon, 1981), the mode by which recollections are reported could affect those recollections. Yet only Stafford and Daly (1984)have compared these two modes commonly used in memory experiments and they found significantdifferencesin the amount and type of memory across modes. In this study, oral and written modes of recall will be compared for their affect on long-term remembrances in the current investigation. Although little previous research has specificallyaddressed memory for natural conversations, the discussion above allows some general expectations to be expressed. As with immediate recall, delayed recall for conversational events is expected to be poor. In addition, it is expected that in the long-term condition, participants will remember even less than when recalling immediately,This prediction is due in part to the low recall scores observed in studies of short-term memory for conversations (Ross & Sicoly, 1979; Stafford & Daly, 1984) as well as from research on long-termmemory in general (Goss, 1982; Hastie et al., 1980; Houston, 1981)and from research on long-term memory for conversational events in particular (Woodall & Folger, 1985). In addition, research from a variety of sources indicatesthat unless events are in and of themselves vivid or dramatic (Nisbett & Ross, 1980)or in some way relevant to the central trait descriptors that define an individual's self-concept (Markus & Smith, 1981), they will not be readily recalled.

(Hl)Participants will recall less content information from the

original

conversations in the long-term recall condition than in the immediate recall condition.

The second issue addresses the type of information remembered. That is, it is of interest to know if and how the quality of information remembered shifts from immediate recall to long-term recall. The literature reviewed above yields several expectations. First, it is expected that recall protocols in the long-term condition will contain proportionally less content information. Second, when recalling at the delayed time, participants are expected to report more evaluationsand descriptionsthan when reporting immediately. Also, it is expected that as the details are forgotten, participants will tend to rely more upon more global summary statements. Thus it is expected that inferences and elaborations will be added. Finally, the accuracy of recall will be poor. That is, in the long-termconditions, it is expected that participants


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will make more errors in recalling the content of the interactions. In summary, the followinghypotheses are offered regarding recall in the long-termcondition as compared to the immediate recall condition: (H2) Long-term recall protocols will consist of proportionally less content than immediate recall protocols. (H3) Long-term recall protocols will contain proportionally more summary statements (themes) than immediate recall protocols. (H4) Long-term recall protocols will contain proportionally more additions and inferences (elaborations) than immediate recall protocols. (H5)Long-termrecall protocols will contain proportionally more evaluations than immediate recall protocols. (H6) Long-term recall protocols will contain proportionally more descriptions than immediate recall protocols. (H7) Long-term recall protocols will contain proportionally more errors than immediate recall protocols.

In the previous short-term analysis, it was found that recall instructions had an impact upon the type of information recalled. Participants who were told they would be asked to recall their conversations produced significantly more reproductions of conversational events while participants in no memory expectancy and “form impressions” conditions reported more evaluationsand descriptions. However, it is unclear as to how these instructions might interact with time. It is possible that with long-term recall attempts, such differences between groups will be lessened and that each group will move toward more general information and fewer reproductions of content. Thus a general research questions was posed: (Q)Will instructionsof varying memory expectancies affect long-termrecall protocols?

The previous study also examined mode of recall on memory for conversation. Basically, it was found that participants who recalled orally produced more information than participants who recalled in writing. In addition,participants in Stafford and Daly’s (1984)study who recalled orally reported a higher level of recall of the content of the conversations, were more redundant, and produced more elaborations than participants who reported their recollections in writing. It is expected that these differences will again be found in the long-term recollections.

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(H8) Participants who recall orally will recall more of the content of the conversation than participants who recall in writing. (H9) Participants who recall orally will produce a higher proportion of elaborations than participants who recall in writing. (H10) Participants who recall orally will produce a higher proportion of redundancies than participants who recall in writing. (H11) Participants who recall orally will produce more recall units than participants who recall in writing. Finally, a comparison will be made of participants’ recall of their own contributions to the conversation, and recall of their partners’ contributions. Stafford and Daly (1984) found participants recalled more of their partners’ input than their own. (H12) Participants will recall more of their partners’ contributions to the conversationsthan their own. METHOD Overview College students served as participants in a two-stage study. Participants took part in a seven-minuteconversation after being given differingmemory expectancy sets (no instructions, to recall, or to form impressions). After the conversations, participants watched a short distraction film and then recalled their conversations either in writing or orally. A subset of the original sample returned 4 weeks later and again recalled their original conversation. Both recall protocols (short term and long term) were coded into 7 recall categories (see scoring procedure below). Participants The original sample consisted of 128 undergraduate students enrolled in various communication courses, 43 returned for the second recall task. The results for the original 128 participants are reported in Stafford and Daly (1984).This analysis concerns the comparison of the scores of the subset of 43 that completed both recall tasks. None of the 43 participants were acquainted with their conversational partners prior to the investigation.


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Design

A 3 X 2 repeated measures factorial design was used with the independent variables being memory expectancy (impression, recall, none) and recall modality (oral versus written).The within participants repeated measure factor was the time of recall (immediate and delayed). Experimental Procedures The participants were paired in 64 dyads. Each dyad participated in the experiment at a separate time. The participants were taken into a room and told they would be participating in a conversation and that their talk would be videotaped. All participants were told the study concerned the way people talk and that they should simply talk to each other about anything they wished for seven minutes. One-third of the dyads were given only these general instructions. One-third were told they would be asked to recall as much as they could from and about the conversation, and one third were told they would be asked to report their impressions of the conversation. At the end of the conversations, participants were led into another room where they watched a short tourist film about Hawaii to serve as a distracter for short-termmemory effects. After the film, the two participants were taken into separate rooms. In one room was some blank paper and a pencil, in the other a cassette tape recorder. Each participant was then told to report everythinghe or she could remember from and about the conversation. One member of each dyad reported orally, one in writing. In order to reduce the risk of participants artificially practicing their recall of the conversations, participants were not told that they would be asked to return for a second recall task at a later date. Rather, for the long-term recall task, the original participants were contacted through their course instructors and asked to participate in a different investigation. In total, 43 of the original participants returned for the follow up. After their arrival, they were again asked to recall as much as they could from and about the conversation. Each participant used the same recall mode (oral or written) that he or she had used in the first phase of the investigation. Overall, 12 participants who had recalled orally returned and 31participants who had recalled in writing returned. For memory expectancy, 15who had received no memory instructions, 11 who had received recall instructions, and 17 who had originally received instructions to form impressions returned.

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Scoring Procedure For the original study, all of the conversations and recall protocols were transcribed. The conversationswere then broken into idea units as developed and reported by Stafford (1982) and Stafford and Daly (1984). Basically, an idea unit is the smallest unit of meaning that has informational or affective value; they represent the gist of each thought expressed by the interactants. Recall protocols were also divided into idea units, but in order to distinguish these from idea units in the conversation,these were labeled recall units. The recall units were then divided into seven categories. Reproductions were the recall units that preserved the gist of the original idea unit from the conversation and served as a measure of the content recalled from the interactions. Redundant reproductions occurred when a participant repeated a reproduction. Themes were summary statements not directly tied to any one idea unit but captured the global situation described or included mention of a topic of discussion with no additionalinformation about the topic. The next category was called elaborations,which were units not specificallystated in the conversation but were plausible and consistent with the conversation. Descriptions were remarks about aspects of the conversationexperience, one’s role in the conversation, or one’s conversationalpartner. They represented impressions of what occurred. The next category,evaluations,was the same as descriptions except that the units reflected a positive or negative (i.e., evaluative) bias. The final category was errors, which included information that was incorrect or inconsistent with the conversation. This category system accounted for 97%of the recall units in both the immediate and longterm protocols. Using this system, 3%of the units were unclassifiable. Brief examples of these categories can be found in the Appendix. In the initial study, the reliabilities for the coding of the short-term recall protocols were established by computing Guetzkow’s (1950)p for the agreement between the senior investigator and a second investigator on 10%of the sample (Guetzkow’sp = .92, p < .05). In this investigation, the reliability for the scoring of the long-term protocols was accomplished by computingGuetzkow’sp (p .81, p < .05) for the agreement between a research assistant and the senior investigator on 10%of the sample. The percentage agreement on unitizing of idea units was 93%, on the recall units agreement was 94%. For the analysis, the dependent variables were transformed into proportions in order to adjust for the varying levels of verbosity among


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participants. First, the amount of recall was computedas the number of reproductions in the recall protocol/idea units in the original conversation. Second, the composition of the recall protocols was of interest. So for the remaining seven dependent variables, a proportion was computed using the frequency of occurrence in each category as the numerator and the number of recall units as the denominator. Arc-sine transformations were used for analyses involving proportions. Finally, the raw number of recall units produced by participants was used as a dependent variable in some analyses. RESULTS A 3 X 2 repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance was computed to examine the effects of time, recall mode, and expectancy on recall using eight dependent variables: (1)the proportion of idea units recalled, (2) the proportion of reproductions in the recall protocols, (3) the proportion of redundant reproductions in the recall protocols, (4) the proportion of themes in the recall protocols, (5) the proportion of elaborations in the recall protocols, (6) the proportion of evaluations in the recall protocols, (7)the proportion of descriptions in the recall protocols, and (8) the proportion of errors in the recall protocols. The mean number of idea units produced in the conversations was 193.05 (sd = 31.08, range 132-253). The repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significantmain effect for time (F(8,30)= 5.02, p < .OO01,Wilks’s value .4274). A significant multivariate main effect was found for recall mode as well (F(8,30)= 3.30, p < .01).A significant main effect for instruction set was also found (F(16,60) 2.24, p < .05, Wilks’s value = .3915).An examination of the two-wayinteractionsshowed a significantinteraction effect for recall mode by memory expectancy (F(16,60)= 2.10, Wilks’s value = .4113, p < .02), and nonsignificant interaction effects for recall mode by time (F(8,30)= 1.12, Wilks’s value .7701, ns) and for memory expectancy by time (F(16,60) = .7647, Wilks’s value .6899,ns). The multivariate effect for three way interaction of memory expectancy by recall mode by time was nonsignificant as well (F(16’60) .6147,Wilks’s value = .7381, ns). However, the power for these nonsignificant interaction effects was only .30 or below for each of the univariate F’s. For the manova, Barlett’s Test of sphericity = 183.12, determinant = .00423, (df = 28, p < .OOOl).

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Five of the eight dependent variables showed statisticallysignificant univariate effects due to time. The first issue of interest was the amount of content participants recalled from their conversations, both in the short-term and in the long-term conditions. Amount of content remembered was computed as the proportion of idea units in the conversation that was recalled by each participant. The mean proportion of content recalled was .096 (sd = .Om, range 0-.40) at the short-term interval. At the long-term time interval, the proportion of content recalled was .038 (sd .032, range 0-.16). The univariate analysis showed this decrease from time one to time two to be significant (F(1,37)= 22.30, p < .OO01, etaz=.17). That is, immediately after the conversation, participants recalled approximately 10%of the conversation. However, one month later, participants recalled only an average of 4%of the content of their earlier interactions. Thus the first hypothesis was supported. Hypotheses 2 , 4 , 6, and 7 were also supported by the other four significant univariate effects that reflect the change in the proportional composition of the recall protocols from time one to time two. At the long-term interval, the protocols contained significantly fewer reproductions (F(1,37)=20.42,p < .OO01, eta’ = .15), but significantly more ~ .03, eta’ = .23), descriptions (F(1,37) = elaborations (F(1,37) = 4 . 8 6 , < 1 3 . 3 7 ,< ~ .001,eta’= .lo),and errors (F(1,37) = 7.%,p< .01,eta’ = .15). Hypotheses 3 and 5 were not supported, as long-term recall protocols did not reflect a greater use of themes and evaluations. However, this lack of support could be due to the low power as an examination of the means shows the trend to be in the expected direction and post hoc power analysis (Cohen, 1977) revealed power for these two univariate effects of less than .21. Means and standard deviations for the untransformed proportions are reported in Table 1. An examination of the univariate effects associated with instruction set revealed a significant univariate effect for proportion of content recall (F(2,37) = 4.32, p < .02, eta’ = .05) and proportion of ~ .01,eta’ = .14). reproductionsin the recall protocols (F(2,37)= 5 . 6 1 , < Probing these differences revealed that “recall” expectancies differed from the other two expectancy sets on both these variables. That is, as in Stafford and Daly’s (1984) study, participants produced more content and a higher proportion of their protocols was content material when they received “recall”instructions. Although participants in the recall condition did not report significantly fewer evaluations and descriptions as Stafford and Daly (1984) found, examination of the


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TABLE 1

Means and Standard Deviations of Untransformed Proportion o f Recall Units in Each Recall Category at Time 1 and at Time 2a Time 1 Time 2 Mean SO Mean SD

-Variable

Reproductions** Redundant Reproductions Themes Elaborations* Eva1uations Descriptions** Errors**

.467 .006 .25 1

.08 3 .133 .005 .004

.2 37 .017 .152 .068 ,166 .085 .015

.288

.193

.006 .292 .1 18 .140 .1 30

.017 .17 1

.030

.082 .174 .128 .041

a. n = 43 at each time (repeated measure).

*p

< .05;

**p

< .Ol.

means revealed the trend to be in this direction and post hoc power analysis revealed that the power associated with these two univariate effects to be less than .36. Means and standard deviations of the untransformed proportions of these variables are reported in Table 2. An examination of univariate effects associated with recall mode revealed that, as in the original study, participants using the oral mode of recall remembered more of the content of the original conversation (F(1,37)= 6.17, p < .05,eta2 = .03), were more redundant (F(1,37)= 8.63, p < .05,eta’ .W), and had a higher proportion of elaborations in their recall protocols (F(1, 37) = 4.16, p < .05, eta’ = .04)than participants who recalled in writing. Hypotheses 8, 9, and 10 were supported. Post hoc power analysis (Cohen, 1977)revealed the power for the nonsignificant univariate effects associated with the main effect of recall to be less than .32. The means and standard deviations of the untransformed proportions are reported in Table 3. Finally, the two-wayinteraction between recall mode and instruction set was examined. Two significant univariate effects were found, the proportion of reproductions and redundant reproductions in the recall protocols. An examination of the cell means reveals that, in spite of the tendency for the oral recall mode to produce a greater number of reproductions, when participants were given no recall instructions, they actually produced a higher proportion of reproductions in the written mode. The examination of the cell means associated with redundancies showed that although the oral mode continued to elicit more redundancies, the effect was not parallel for all conditions of

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HUMAN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH / Winter 1987 TABLE 2

Means and Standard Deviations o f the Untransformed Proportion of Dependent Variables by Expectancy Set Collapsed Across Time Expectancy Set Variable

Nonea Mean SD

Idea Units Recalled* Reproductions* Redundant Reproductions Themes Elaborations Evaluations Descriptions Errors

.064a .376a .011 .289

.08S .1 38 .077 .017

.053 ,162 .017 .01S .047 .1 30

.088 .018

b Recall Mean SD .090D SISb

.005 .237 .lo5 .057 .066 .023

,061 ,183 .009 ,140 .063 .121 ,072 .034

Impression‘ Mean SD .064a .376a .01 1 .289

.08S .138 .077 .017

.OS3 .162 .017 .1OS .047 .1 30 ,088 .018

NOTE: Different superscripts indicate means are significantly different at the *p < .05 level. a. n = 15. b. n = l l . c. n = 1 7 .

expectancy set. When participants were given instructions to form impressions, the differencein the number of redundancies between the recall modes was much smaller than the differences in the other two expectancy set conditions. Post hoc analysis (Cohen, 1977) revealed the power for the nonsignificant univariate effects associated with this interaction effect to be less than .26. A separate analysis using the sheer number of recall units produced by the participants at time one and time two as the dependent variables revealed that participants offered significantlyfewer recall units at time two (F(1,37) = 17.07, p < .OO01, eta’ = .35). The mean number of recall units produced by participants in the immediate recall condition was 35.37 (sd 21.53, range = 10-103).The mean number of recall units produced by participants in the long-term condition was 24.36 (sd = 11.35, range = 8-55).A main effect for recall mode was also found (F(1, 37) = 20.68, p < .Owl, eta’ = .05). That is, collapsing across time, participants who recalled orally produced a significantly greater number of recall units than those who reported in writing (mean for oral = 44.03, mean for writing = 24.36). Thus hypothesis 11was supported. However, this difference in recall modes is much greater at time one than at time two suggesting that in the long-termcondition, recall mode has much less of an impact on verbosity than in the immediate condition. Indeed, the interaction effect for time by recall mode is


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TABLE 3

Means and Standard Deviations of Untransformed Proportion of Dependent Variables by Recall Mode Across Time Orula

Recall Mode Vuriuble

Meun

SD

Idea Units Recalled* Reproductions Redundant Reproductions** Themes Elaborations* Evaluations Descriptions Errors

.087 .344 .014 .2 30 .125 .161 .122 .013

.059 .186 .018 .117

a. n = 13. b. n = 32. *p < .05; **p

.050

.124 .08 6 .018

b Written Meun SD

.05 9 .391 .OO3 .288 -091 .127 .082 .019

.046 .193 .009 .126 .061 .147 .09 3 .024

< .01.

marginally significant (F(1,37)= 3 . 0 7 , ~ < .08).There was no significant main effect for memory expectancy (F(2,37)= .06, ns) nor was there a significant two-wayinteraction recall by instruction (F(2,37)= .16, ns) or between instructionby time (F(2,37)= 1.29,ns). Finally,there was no significant three-wayinteraction (F(2,37)= .29, ns). However, post hoc power analysis (Cohen, 1977)showed the power to be less than .36 for all these analyses. Stafford and Daly (1984) found that participants reported more of their conversational partners’ contributions to the conversation than their own contributions.It was of interest to see if the same held true in the long-term condition. Therefore, an additional analysis was undertaken to examine whether there were differences in participants’ recall of their own contributions to the conversation and their partner’s contributions. In order to do this, the idea units in the conversation were identified as being uttered by one or the other individualand each reproduction in the recall protocol was assigned to one or the other interactant. Thus reproductions remembered by a participant, which that participant had originally said, were called “own” reproductions and reproductions remembered by a participant that had been originally said by the partner were labeled “other” reproductions. The proportion of own reproductions was computed as the number of own reproductions in the recall protocol over the number of idea units originally produced by that participant. The proportion of “other”

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reproductions was computed as the number of other reproductions in the recall protocol divided by the number of idea units produced by the partner in the original conversation. T-tests for related pairs were conducted upon the transformed proportions. In the immediate recall condition, participants recalled significantly more of their partner’s contributions to the conversation than their own contributions (t(42) 2.76, p < .0005, one-tailed).In the long term, participants also recalled significantlymore of their partners’ contributions to the conversation (t(42)= 3.55, p < .0005, one-tailed). As would be expected from the significant decrease in content remembered from time one to time two reported above, participants remembered significantly fewer of both their own (t(42) 3.53, p < .OOO5, one-tailed)and the other’s (t(42) 5.81, p < .oooO5, one-tailed) contributions at time two than at time one. Participants reported 7.7% of their own conversations at time one and 2.3% at time two. Participants reported 11.5%of their partners’ conversation at time one and 4.8% at time two. In sum, hypothesis 12 was supported.

DISCUSSION This study represents an extension of Stafford and Daly’s (1984) study of conversational memory. As discussed then, most studies claiming to study memory for conversationalphenomenon suffer from the limitations of using recognition-type recall tasks and/or failure to examine actual participants’ recall of their own conversations. In addition, no study to date has examined changes in participants’ memories for natural conversationsover time. The current investigation overcomes these limitations by using conversationalparticipants in free recall conditions at two points in time, immediately and one month later. This study investigated several general questions. First, how much do participants recall from interactions? Participants recalled approximately 10%of the content of their interactions in the immediate recall test. This figure dropped, however, to only 4% when recall was measured one month later. The small quantity of long-term memory was expected, given the low level of recall in the immediate condition (Stafford & Daly, 1984) and due to the expectation that memory for content would decrease over time. In addition, participants not only recalled significantly less of the content of their original interactions, their protocols in the long-term (;onditioris contained proportionally

Stafford,Burggraf, Sharkey / NATURAL CONVERSATIONS

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less content categoriesthan protocols in the short-termrecall study. In fact, at the short-term interval, approximately one-half of the protocols that participants reported could be classified as content material, however, at the long-term interval, less than one-third of the material recalled dealt with the content of the interactions. These findings give credence to the idea that information exchange may be of secondary importancein casual conversation.As discussed earlier, it may be that, at times, the relational information that is conveyed during conversation is at least as, if not more, meaningful to participants. Indeed, as attribution literature and discussionson small talk would lead us to expect, it is likely that initial interactions serve the participant in drawing impressions to form the basis of future interactions, As Stafford and Daly (1984, p. 394)noted, “exchanges like these may be necessary, but not memorable.” Our investigation of the types of infoxmation recalled also suggests that impressions rather than information may be the goal of casual interactions. In the short-termanalysis, Stafford and Daly (1984)found that participants reported a number of summary statements, evaluations, and descriptions.This suggested that people do not leave such interactions with recall for specific conversational events, but rather with more global information that may help shape future interactions. The examination of participants’memories of the same conversations one month later supports this interpretation. When compared to the short-term protocols, the long-term protocols reflected a significant increase in the number of elaborations, descriptions, and errors, suggesting that, over time, participants are less accurate about the content of actual conversations in that they fill in sketchy details with inferences and elaborations and errors. Also as predicted, participants relied more heavily on descriptions of the interaction at the second recall time, again suggesting a tendency to move from the recall of details to the recall of impressions. This interpretation is also supported by the trend toward a greater use of summary statements and evaluations at the second recall time. The extremely low quantity of information that conversational partners glean from casual interactions casts doubt on some basic assumptions about communication and relationship negotiation and suggests several potential areas for future research (Roloff & Berger, 1982).First, an implicit assumption underlying many research designs is that interactorspurposefullyglean informationfrom the content of their interactions. Indeed, content analyses are often employed and the

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results of such analyses are offered as either correlaries of, or as operationalizations of, some other concept or variable. While such analyses often contribute to our knowledge of how communication functions in small group and interpersonal interactions, our results suggest that the information contained in content is, at least at times, secondary to its function as a forum in which relationshipmessages are exchanged. Although many researchers have turned away from explicit examinations of content for the purpose of investigatingthe relational implications of messages (Courtright, Millar, & Rogers-Millar, 1979; Erikson & Rogers, 1973; Rogers-Millar & Millar, 1979), questions of validity have slowed our progress in this domain of research (see Folger & Poole, 1981;Folger & Sillars, 1980;Rogers& Millar, 1981).Moreover, most of this research has focused on intimate interactions. The results of our analysis along with those of Kemper (1980) and Kemper and Thissen (1981) suggest that communication scholars should continue to give their attention to the relational implications of messages. Our research suggests a particular need for such research in casual and initial interactions in order to gain a better understanding of the role of communication in relationship development. A second assumption that commonly underlies communication research is that increased communication increases understanding. This association is so intuitively obvious that it is seldom investigated (see Sillars, Pike, Jones, & Murphy, 1984).However, understanding is often explored in associationwith other variables and a striking result is that little true understanding exists even in long-term intimate relationships. Our findings suggest that the generally poor understanding scores reported in previous research may be the result of poor memory for conversational content. Thus a potentially fruitful area for future research would be to look at understanding in association with conversational memory. The next general issue was that of the effect of memory expectancy. Stafford and Daly (1984) found that expectancies to recall the conversation yielded different effects from the no memory expectancies and the expectancies to form impressions. It was hypothesized here that the effect of expectancies would wash out over time as all participants moved toward less recall of content. Although all instruction groups did recall less content at time two, a main effect for instruction set was found across time. It seems that when people are forewarnedthat they will be asked to recall a conversationalevent, they still remember more content than participants with no such expec-


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tations even after a significant delay. Although nonsignificant in this investigation (possibly due to the low power), as Stafford and Daly (1984)found, participants also tended to report more general summary statements and evaluations when in the impression or no expectancy conditions. It seems that when participants are given no memory instructionsthey tend to recall in a similar manner as when told to form impressions. This finding again supports participants’ goals in conversations may be of the nature of forming impressions for future interaction than the remembrance of content. The effect of recalling in writing versus recalling orally was also explored. It was hypothesized that participants who recalled orally would produce more information and that their protocols would consist of proportionallymore content, elaborations,and redundancies.These predictions were supported. As Stafford and Daly (1984,p. 395) noted, “The implication of these findings is straightforward: One gets different sorts of recall reported depending upon whether recall is produced orally or in writing.” Writing and speaking are simply two different modes of production. When one reports orally, there appears to be a tendency to be more verbose and free flowing than when a report is given in writing. Finally, it was hypothesized that participants would report more information about their partners than about themselves. This hypothesis was supported. This may be best explained by what Stafford and Daly (1984) called a familiarity effect. That is, participants may feel familiar with the informationthey contributed to the conversationsand thus find it not as important to store or report. Obviously, participants did not forget, for example,their own home towns (an item that usually emerged in these initial interactions) as they frequently forgot their partner’s home towns. Rather, participantsmay have forgottenwhether or not they told their partner their home town or, due to the familiarity effect in reporting, simply found it more important to report what they could remember about their partner than themselves. Although the findings here are consistent with Wyer and Carlston’s (1979)model of associative memory, an attempt was not made here to explore the nature of conversationalstorage and retrieval. Rather, the emphasis has been upon how time, expectancies, and modes of recall affect the amount and general categories of recall. It was found that not only does time contribute to shifts in memory, but that the expectancies one has and the mode one uses to report memories influences amount and type of recall. Thus, as Stafford and Daly (1984) warn, general-

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izations from studies varying in expectancies and recall modes should be made cautiously, as should generalizationsdrawn concerning longterm memory based upon stimuli other than conversations. An alternativeapproach would be to study the types of things people remember from their conversations as Tracy (1982),Daly and Korinek (1980), and MacWhinney et al. (1982) have done. Knapp and his colleagues (Knapp, Stafford, & Daly, 1986;Knapp, Stohl, & Reardon, 1981), taking a retrospective interviewing approach, have found that some conversational events tend to stay with people for years, with participants reporting they can recall the exact words used in a given interaction that may have occurred many years earlier. Continued investigations into the type of information recalled and how that information is used to shape future interactions is called for. In addition, it remains to be seen if memory for conversationsbetween relationship partners would show the same lack of recall of content. In summary, it appears that even though interactionsinvolvingsmall talk are a common if not daily experience, individuals seem to remember very little content from such interactions.Rather, in the long run, as attribution theory would predict, we appear to use such interactions to form impressions and descriptions of others and to make inferences about them. Knapp’s (1984)characterization of small talk may be correct. The act of conversingmaybe more important than the informationexchanged during casual interactions. APPENDIX Excerpt from a Conversation Abstracted into Idea Units (1) A: It is a nice day. ( 2 ) B: Yes it is. (3) B: Where are you from? (4) A: Houston. (5) A: Do you go t o a church? ( 6 ) B: Yes. (7) B: I’m Baptist. (8) A: I’m Methodist. (9) A: Do you like sports? (10) B: Yes. (11) B: I play softball. (12) B: I play basketball. (13) B: I play volleyball. Recall units are any memory of, any implication from, any description, elaboration, evaluation and so on of the conversation, t h e conversants, o r


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the experience. Each protocol is divided into recall units by placing parentheses around each unit. Information that is not part of the recall is not coded (e.g., “1 can’t think of anything else t o say,” or “I don’t like talking t o this tape recorder”). Coded Excerpt from B’s Recall Protocal reproduction 1 (She said it was a pretty day.) reproduction 7 ( I told her I was Baptist.)

elaboration ( I go t o the Second Baptist.)

and reproduction 6 (church.)

summary (I told her I play a lot of sports.)

summary (We talked about sports.)

redundant reproduction That’s all I remember. Oh yeah. (I told her I was a Baptist.) error ((She said she was from Dallas.) description evaluation Let’s see. What else. (She had o n blue jeans) and (she seemed really nice).

NOTE 1. As Stafford and Daly (1984) have noted, the argument is not being advanced that recognition tasks have no validity in the study of conversational memory. It could be claimed that conversations do involve a certain amount of cued recognition,whereby the remarks of one individual cue the memory of another. Yet even in this instance, the interactants must rely upon their own stored information, as opposed to a set of experimenter-determined multiple-choiceoptions. However, Benoit and Benoit (1987) have argued that cued recall tasks may most closely resemble conversationalprocedures. They found much higher recall when using such tasks than when free recall procedures were used. However, the question of free versus cued recall does raise an interesting substantive question, which we feel should be addressed in future research. That is, before we can determine whether free or cued recall procedures are methodologically superior to one another, we need to investigate the extent to which socialactors cue one another’s memories of previous conversations in subsequent conversations. If, for example, social actors meeting for the second time reintroduce a large percentage of the topics discussed in their initial encounter, then cued recall procedures would be the more valid methodological procedure for measuring conversational memory. If, on the other hand, social actors in a second encounter bring in little content from their initial

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encounter, and then branch off from this into new directions, free recall procedures would be the more appropriate method. Clearly that is a question that should be addressed in future research.

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