Selecting learning partners: memory for participation and competence

Remembering information about others is important but challenging in various social contexts. For instance, in long-term collaborative educational settings, students often need to choose peers for academic support. In different contexts, the selection process can depend on group awareness, i.e., the state of being informed about relevant social or cognitive characteristics of (potential) learning partners, like their participation or competence. However, selection can also depend on memory for different group awareness information on peers, which is not always accurate. An experimental study (N = 85) examined how type (participation vs. competence) and level (high vs. medium vs. low) of presented group awareness information influence learning partner selection in two phases (when information is present and when it is remembered). Higher levels were associated with higher selection probabilities, regardless of information type. Social comparison tendencies were associated with avoiding low participation partners. Moreover, we analyzed memory for group awareness information with multinomial processing tree model-based analyses: high and low participation levels were remembered better than medium levels, whereas high competence was remembered better than medium and low competence. Findings suggest that learners use different approach and avoidance strategies for choosing learning partners based on the type of given information.