Chunking by social relationship in working memory
Ilenia Paparella, Liuba Papeo
Abstract
Working memory (WM) uses knowledge and relations to organize and store multiple items in fewer structured units, or chunks. We investigated: (a) whether a crowd that exceeds the WM capacity is retained better if individuals can be grouped in social chunks; and (b) what counts as a social chunk: two individuals involved in a meaningful interaction or just spatially close and face-to-face. In a delayed change-detection task, participants were more accurate in reporting changes in arrays involving facing (vs. non-facing) dyads whether they depicted meaningful interactions or not (Experiments 1, 2 and 4). This advantage survived a secondary task that increased WM load, only when facing dyads formed meaningful interactions (Experiment 3). Thus, WM uses representation of interaction to chunk crowds in social groups. The mere face-to-face positioning is sufficient to trigger social chunking, although without a semantic anchor this process is fainter and more susceptible to interference.