Transactive memory
Encyclopedia
Transactive memory
is a psychological hypothesis first proposed by Daniel Wegner
in 1985 as a response to earlier theories of "group mind" such as groupthink
. A transactive memory system is a system through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge. Transactive memory suggests an analysis not only of how couples
and families in close relationships coordinate memory and tasks at home, but how teams
, larger groups and organizations come to develop a "group mind
", a memory system that is more complex and potentially more effective than that of any of its individual constituents.
According to Wegner, a transactive memory system consists of the knowledge stored in each individual's memory combined with metamemory
containing information
regarding the different teammate's domains of expertise. Just as the individual's metamemory allows him to be aware of what information is available for retrieval
, so does the transactive memory system provide teammates with information regarding the knowledge
they have access to within the team. Group members learn who knowledge experts are and how to access expertise through communicative processes. In this way, a transactive memory system can provide the group members with more and better knowledge than any individual could access on his own.
. When a group possesses a strong transactive memory system, the need for explicit coordination efforts reduces since teammates are aware of other teammates strengths and weaknesses, can anticipate their behavior and responds, and make quick adjustments of their own behavior in return.
of the teammates, their satisfaction and sense of identification
with the team and the organization.
Transactive memory may enhance performance through three major mechanisms
:
• Division of the responsibility on different kinds of knowledge across the teammates allows each one of them to broaden his own knowledge in a specific area while maintaining access to relevant required task knowledge possessed by others.
• Developing transactive memory system will shorten the time needed for seeking the appropriate knowledge: when each team member knows who to turn to for the required information, less time is wasted in search for relevant task knowledge.
• The shared understanding of the teammates regarding the interpersonal relations
in the team and the different expertise domains, enables them to better predict and anticipate how their team colleagues would behave, leading to well coordinated and efficient interactions.
it by ascribing each knowledge domain to the corresponding team member. Sometimes, this acquaintance emerge through "who did what" conversation.
The encoding process is highly important to the development of transactive memory, since it lays the basis for an effective transactive memory system. Encoding occurs through interaction between teammates: through sharing knowledge and seeking information from other team members teammates learn on the expertise of each team member as a first essential step towards specialization.
stage, the relevant information is stored in the possession of the team member owning the corresponding expertise; once the experts have been identified, new information is transmitted directly to the relevant team member, a process which improves the learning
process and reduces the load
on the memory of the individual teammate.
stage, the team identifies the team member specializing in the required knowledge area and turn to him to receive the knowledge.
supports the development of transactive memory. When the training was conducted jointly to all group members, the team developed a stronger and better transactive memory system, recalled more information about the process, and made less errors, compared to teams that their teammates were trained separately. The researchers concluded that the interactions that took place during the joint training allowed the team members to be aware of other teammates' skills, assisted them to search the relevant information at the corresponding teammate, asses the accuracy and reliability of this information and as a result perform better in the task. At the first stages in a group's life cycle, knowing each of the team members' expertise allows them to distribute the work in a more efficient way and allocate the different assignments to team members that are most qualified for these assignments. The existence of many interactions in the early stages of group formation provides each of the teammates the opportunity to get to know other team members' training, level of expertise or the lack of knowledge in certain areas, and develop a shared understanding of the task's requirements and the way that the total of the teammates knowledge combines together
Hence, it seems that communication
serves as a crucial component in the development of transactive memory. Yet, it seems that not any kind of communication and interaction between team members will bring to the construction of transactive memory. Communication, in general serves as a way of transferring information from one person to another, but for the purpose of transactive memory construction this communication must deal with information regarding the knowledge, expertise and relevant experience of other individuals in the system.
Moreland & Myaskovsky (2000) have shown that transactive memory can be developed without any interaction between teammates. As a substitute to teammates' communication they used a feedback
summarizing team members' skills in the relevant task and team members' domains of expertise, which was given to each team member by the researches, before they started performing the task. Although the feedback and the information regarding teammates knowledge was provided by the researches and teammates did not communicate with each other in the encoding stage, a strong transactive memory system was formed and affected positively the team's performance. The decisive component in the formation of transactive memory is sharing specific information regarding team members' knowledge and domains of expertise, which is achieved whether by interactions taking place during shared learning, or by any other means of information transformation.
on 14 July 2011 suggests that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information, but higher rates of recall of the sources of the information. The research claims that the internet
has become a primary source of external transactive memory due to the ease of finding information on it.
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
is a psychological hypothesis first proposed by Daniel Wegner
Daniel Wegner
Daniel M. Wegner is an American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science...
in 1985 as a response to earlier theories of "group mind" such as groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
. A transactive memory system is a system through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge. Transactive memory suggests an analysis not only of how couples
Couples
thumb|right|1st edition Couples is a 1968 novel by American author John Updike.-Summary:The novel focuses on a promiscuous circle of ten couples in the small Massachusetts town of Tarbox...
and families in close relationships coordinate memory and tasks at home, but how teams
TEAMS
Teams is the plural form of team.TEAMS may also refer to:*TEAMS , a competition sponsored by JETS*TEAMS , an Kenyan initiative to link the country to the rest of the world through a submarine fibre optic cable....
, larger groups and organizations come to develop a "group mind
Group mind
Group mind can mean:* Collective intelligence, a concept in sociology and philosophy* Egregore is a phenomenon in occultism which has been described as group mind.* Group mind , a type of collective consciousness...
", a memory system that is more complex and potentially more effective than that of any of its individual constituents.
According to Wegner, a transactive memory system consists of the knowledge stored in each individual's memory combined with metamemory
Metamemory
Metamemory, one component of metacognition, is about one’s memory capabilities and strategies that can aid memory, as well as the processes involved in memory self-monitoring. This self-awareness of memory has important implications for how people learn and use memories...
containing information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
regarding the different teammate's domains of expertise. Just as the individual's metamemory allows him to be aware of what information is available for retrieval
Information retrieval
Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...
, so does the transactive memory system provide teammates with information regarding the knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
they have access to within the team. Group members learn who knowledge experts are and how to access expertise through communicative processes. In this way, a transactive memory system can provide the group members with more and better knowledge than any individual could access on his own.
The basic units of transactive memory
Most researchers agree that the basic components of transactive memory system consist of specialization, coordination and credibility.Specialization
A strong transactive memory system is achieved once an individual gains information about the knowledge repertoire that other teammates hold and uses this information in order to acquire different complementary knowledge. The first component, specialization, is the product of this process. Once a transactive memory system is developed each of the different teammates holds different and distinguished domains of knowledge. Specialization is an important dimension of the transactive memory system, it allows the team to make a more efficient use in the collective knowledge, when each team member can deepen his knowledge in the lacking areas (as opposed to acquiring congruent knowledge) and therefore enlarge the total of the teams' collective knowledge. Hollingshead (1998a), had demonstrated that specialization lead to a more efficient and organized effort investment in information retrieval, prevention of information redundancy and supplied accessibility to larger range of expertise.Coordination
The second component, task coordination, refers to the extent of necessity in explicit revealed planning and coordinating efforts during teamworkTeamwork
Teamwork is action performed by a team towards a common goal. A team consists of more than one person, each of whom typically has different responsibilities....
. When a group possesses a strong transactive memory system, the need for explicit coordination efforts reduces since teammates are aware of other teammates strengths and weaknesses, can anticipate their behavior and responds, and make quick adjustments of their own behavior in return.
Credibility
The third component is the result of the other two components. Credibility reflects the extent to which the team members believe that the relevant task knowledge possessed by any of the other team members is correct and accurate.Transactive memory and team performance
It has been found that transactive memory allows a quicker access to a larger amount of knowledge, improves information integration processes, improves decision making processes, and even influences the efficiency perceptionPerception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
of the teammates, their satisfaction and sense of identification
Organizational identification
-Definitions of Identification and Organizational Identification:Phillip Tompkins one was of the first to use the phrase 'organizational identification' and is a pioneer in the study of organizational communication . Simon has also been given credit for establishing organizational identification...
with the team and the organization.
Transactive memory may enhance performance through three major mechanisms
Mechanism (sociology)
During the last decade there has been a growing interest in social mechanisms and mechanism-based explanations, not only in sociology and the social sciences but also in philosophy of science, particularly philosophy of biology....
:
• Division of the responsibility on different kinds of knowledge across the teammates allows each one of them to broaden his own knowledge in a specific area while maintaining access to relevant required task knowledge possessed by others.
• Developing transactive memory system will shorten the time needed for seeking the appropriate knowledge: when each team member knows who to turn to for the required information, less time is wasted in search for relevant task knowledge.
• The shared understanding of the teammates regarding the interpersonal relations
Interpersonal relationship
An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...
in the team and the different expertise domains, enables them to better predict and anticipate how their team colleagues would behave, leading to well coordinated and efficient interactions.
Prerequisite conditions for transactive memory development
Just like human memory, the transactive memory system involves three stages: encoding, storage and retrieval.Encoding
In the encoding stage, the teammates gain information on the other team members domains of knowledge and categorizeCategorization
Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge...
it by ascribing each knowledge domain to the corresponding team member. Sometimes, this acquaintance emerge through "who did what" conversation.
The encoding process is highly important to the development of transactive memory, since it lays the basis for an effective transactive memory system. Encoding occurs through interaction between teammates: through sharing knowledge and seeking information from other team members teammates learn on the expertise of each team member as a first essential step towards specialization.
Storage
In the storageStorage (memory)
Storage in human memory is one of three core process of memory, along with Recall and Encoding. It refers to the retention of information, which has been achieved through the encoding process, in brain for prolonged period of time until it is accessed by the recall process...
stage, the relevant information is stored in the possession of the team member owning the corresponding expertise; once the experts have been identified, new information is transmitted directly to the relevant team member, a process which improves the learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
process and reduces the load
Cognitive load
The term cognitive load is used in cognitive psychology to illustrate the load related to the executive control of working memory . Theories contend that during complex learning activities the amount of information and interactions that must be processed simultaneously can either under-load, or...
on the memory of the individual teammate.
Retrieval
During the retrievalInformation retrieval
Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...
stage, the team identifies the team member specializing in the required knowledge area and turn to him to receive the knowledge.
Development of transactive memory
Many researches have shown that the transactive memory system is built through interactions between team members. In a series of researches, it has been found that group trainingTraining
The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...
supports the development of transactive memory. When the training was conducted jointly to all group members, the team developed a stronger and better transactive memory system, recalled more information about the process, and made less errors, compared to teams that their teammates were trained separately. The researchers concluded that the interactions that took place during the joint training allowed the team members to be aware of other teammates' skills, assisted them to search the relevant information at the corresponding teammate, asses the accuracy and reliability of this information and as a result perform better in the task. At the first stages in a group's life cycle, knowing each of the team members' expertise allows them to distribute the work in a more efficient way and allocate the different assignments to team members that are most qualified for these assignments. The existence of many interactions in the early stages of group formation provides each of the teammates the opportunity to get to know other team members' training, level of expertise or the lack of knowledge in certain areas, and develop a shared understanding of the task's requirements and the way that the total of the teammates knowledge combines together
Hence, it seems that communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
serves as a crucial component in the development of transactive memory. Yet, it seems that not any kind of communication and interaction between team members will bring to the construction of transactive memory. Communication, in general serves as a way of transferring information from one person to another, but for the purpose of transactive memory construction this communication must deal with information regarding the knowledge, expertise and relevant experience of other individuals in the system.
Moreland & Myaskovsky (2000) have shown that transactive memory can be developed without any interaction between teammates. As a substitute to teammates' communication they used a feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
summarizing team members' skills in the relevant task and team members' domains of expertise, which was given to each team member by the researches, before they started performing the task. Although the feedback and the information regarding teammates knowledge was provided by the researches and teammates did not communicate with each other in the encoding stage, a strong transactive memory system was formed and affected positively the team's performance. The decisive component in the formation of transactive memory is sharing specific information regarding team members' knowledge and domains of expertise, which is achieved whether by interactions taking place during shared learning, or by any other means of information transformation.
Internet
Research published in ScienceScience (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
on 14 July 2011 suggests that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information, but higher rates of recall of the sources of the information. The research claims that the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
has become a primary source of external transactive memory due to the ease of finding information on it.