Adverse Consequences of Collaboration on Spatial Problem-Solving

Collaboration can be beneficial for learning and productivity. For example, group members might use helpful productions from their partners to complete the subsequent tasks. However, group members can also be provided with inaccurate information generated by their partners. Projects documenting the problems associated with exposure to inaccurate contributions tend to focus on verbal learning and memorization experiences, leaving unclear whether similar effects emerge in tasks involving pre-existing visuospatial understandings. The current study used a combined spatial and verbal task to explore discourse-relevant factors that could increase or decrease reliance on problematic partner contributions. Participants worked in pairs to fill in a map of the U.S. states and their capitals. This required retrieving location names and identifying where those names and locations were situated on the map. During their collaborations, partners sometimes provided inaccurate responses. This afforded examination as to whether those inaccurate productions would be encoded and used on subsequent tasks. Analyses of partners’ discourse moves revealed that how individuals responded to a partner’s contributions predicted whether any partner-generated inaccuracies were used on a subsequent individual test. These results illustrate the potential negative consequences of collaboration in tasks that include spatial considerations and factors that influence the use of partner productions.