Do High Working Memory Groups Perform Better? A Conceptual Approach Linking Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity to Group Performance

A growing body of research shows that individual differences in working memory capacity play a pivotal role for a large number of higher order cognitive tasks. Surprisingly, however, the impact of individual differences in working memory capacity on group performance has received little attention. In this conceptual article, we focus on three typical group tasks (group idea generation, group decision making, group judgment) and, for each task, provide an analysis of how individual differences in working memory capacity might affect group performance. Our key idea is that group interaction is a cognitively demanding task as group members have to continuously monitor the ongoing conversation, hold their ideas in memory, integrate the information put forth by others, and update their mental representations accordingly. Therefore, individual differences in working memory capacity are presumed to have a profound impact on how people process information during group interaction.