Effects of partner familiarity on conversation and memory in healthy adults

Conversations are critical for building and maintaining relationships. However, successful communication require certain elements. For example, individuals must remember what they have discussed and adjust communication based of their partner’s knowledge. The amount of information also depends on familiarity between conversation partners. Factors like age and relationship closeness can affect conversation dynamics, although it is less clear which factors are most pertinent during discourse. To explore this, two studies with healthy younger and older adults were conducted to investigate conversation characteristics and memory. In the first study, younger adults interacting with either their friend or a stranger completed a conversation and memory task via zoom. Results indicate that conversation partners remember more of what they say than their partner, but do not recall most conversational contents overall. The platform (Zoom) may have contributed to the nature of these results. Therefore, the second study was conducted in-person also including older adults using the same study design. Results of this study indicate significant differences in both conversation and memory for younger and older adult pairs. Namely, clout–or confidence–showed significance for both conversation and memory. Clout was higher in older adults during conversation and higher in younger adults during memory recall, with friends showing the most clout overall. Analytic and authentic parameters reached significance in few situations throughout, suggesting present effects of aging and relationship closeness contextually. In summary, our findings replicate previous research and suggest that factors like modality of communication, age, and relationship closeness may influence conversation dynamics.