The current study tested the effects of attentive versus distracted listening on both speakers and listeners in recall of an autobiographical memory. Participants included 128 pairs of friends who spoke with each other over a video call about recent negative experience that one of them had. Participants were randomly assigned to be speakers or listeners, and listeners were randomly assigned to an attentive and a distracted condition. Memory narratives were coded for factual and interpretive content. Participants returned approximately 4 weeks later, when both speaker and listener separately reported their memories of the prior conversation. Attentive listening was linked both to greater recall by the speaker at time 1 and greater listener recall at time 2, but not to speaker’s recall at time 2. Results show the effects of listener contributions to recall in the moment but raise questions as to whether they persist beyond the conversation in many scenarios.

Grysman, Azriel, Melanie Baime, and Ethan Cantor. Listeners' Effects on Autobiographical Memory for Recent Events. Memory (Article published online October 18, 2023). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2023.2270778

Azriel Grysman is a professor of Psychology at Dickinson College.
Melanie Baime, Dickinson College class of 2021.
Ethan Cantor, Dickinson College class of 2022.

For more information on the published version, visit Taylor and Francis's Website. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2023.2270778

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