ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Psychology in Education
Source memory and collaborative learning: The roles of conflicting information, group composition, and learning partner expertise
Provisionally accepted
- University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
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After collaborative learning, remembering which learning partner shared certain information (source memory) supports social learning strategies such as academic help-seeking: remembering the source helps to ask the right peer when further help is needed. A pseudo-collaborative experiment (128 participants) investigated how conflicting information (with conflict vs. without conflict), group composition (heterogeneous vs. homogeneous knowledge levels), and learning partner expertise regarding the learning topic (high vs. medium vs. low) affect source memory and content learning. Multinomial processing tree models estimated source memory unconfounded by guessing. The mere presence of conflicting information did not affect content learning, but in conditions with conflicting information, those participants who experienced stronger cognitive conflicts learned the content better. Moreover, source memory was better in contexts without conflicting information. Group composition and learning partner expertise did not influence content learning but source memory: in heterogeneous groups, participants remembered the sources better, particularly the learning partners with high expertise. These findings link educational research with cognitive psychology by showing how social and informational factors jointly shape memory processes in collaborative contexts. Considering effects of content-and person-related factors on source memory (and thereby students' help-seeking processes) offers insights into the long-term impact of instructional design and educational tools, ultimately supporting learners in effectively utilizing their peers' knowledge.
Keywords: Collaborative Learning, source memory, conflicting information, Group composition, Learning partner expertise, Group awareness, Cognitive Modeling
Received: 22 Aug 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ülker and Bodemer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Oktay Ülker
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