Abstract
Theoretical descriptions of transactive memory systems (TMSs) have postulated that intimate couples develop coordinated systems for sharing and distributing cognitive labour. Although such systems have been well-studied in research on organisational teams, little research has examined how TMSs operate in the context of intimate relationships. In the current study, we used semi-structured interviews to ask 39 older long-married couples to describe how they shared cognitive labour between them. We used qualitative analysis to examine themes relating to specialisation, credibility, and coordination – the key components of successful TMSs identified in organisational teams. We found that couples described their everyday memory sharing practices in ways that reflected these themes, with our findings revealing nuanced descriptions of sources of specialisation and the division of memory labour in relationships, as well as the impacts of ageing and cognitive decline on couples’ TMSs. We discuss these findings in terms of applications of transactive memory theory to intimate relationships, couples as a dyadic unit of analysis, and the role of intimate relationships in adapting to age-related change.
Introduction
Older couples who have spent decades sharing their lives are a prime example of intimate social groups. Their day-to-day experiences and cognitive lives are exceptionally entwined and interdependent (Dixon, 2011; Hoppmann, Gerstorf, & Luszcz, 2011). Small intimate groups like couples or families share a host of memory activities in day-to-day life: from reminiscing about a shared past event such as a birthday party (episodic memory), recalling an actor’s name while watching a film (semantic memory), or remembering to put the garbage bins out for collection on certain days of the week (prospective memory). Over the course of their relationship, couples develop idiosyncratic routines and systems for coordinating joint tasks and activities in order to divide cognitive labour and enhance memory success. Therefore, for long-term couples, everyday cognitive functions (such as memory) can be understood in the context of their dyadic relationship (Harris et al., 2014; Harris, Sutton et al., 2022). Successfully sharing and supporting each other to complete daily tasks and chores (e.g., compassionate love) is an important feature of successful couple relationships, especially as needs for support increase with age (Sabey, Rauer, & Haselschwerdt, 2016). Moreover, the dynamics of support appear to arise relatively early and remain stable throughout relationships, and are heavily shaped by societal norms such as gender (Thomeer & Clark, 2021).
Long-term intimate couples represent an extreme example of interdependence, in which cognitive, relational, and social aspects of relationships come together. This interdependence within couples has been theoretically characterised as ‘transactive memory systems’ (Wegner, 1987; Wegner et al., 1991). However so far, transactive memory theory has been largely studied empirically within organisational teams rather than couples (Barnier, Klein et al., 2018). In the current research, we studied the way that long-term couples described interdependence in daily life, to examine evidence for the theorised components of transactive memory within their descriptions.
Intimate Couples as Transactive Memory Systems
According to Wegner’s transactive memory theory, people in close relationships develop cognitive interdependence and should be considered as an interdependent transactive memory system (TMS) rather than independent individuals (Wegner, 1987; Wegner et al., 1991). That is, people working together in small groups, over time, develop systems and communication strategies to coordinate joint cognitive tasks, with their individual memory systems sharing encoding, storage, and retrieval of information (Barnier, Klein et al., 2018). Group members develop metaknowledge, or knowledge of what others know, along with effective ways to coordinate and access this information. Therefore, members of a TMS distribute cognitive labour within the group, and together as a group can remember more effectively and efficiently than the constituent individuals would if working alone (Wegner, 1995).
There are a handful of studies examining remembering in romantic couples, which show that couples recall more together than they do separately (Barnier, Harris, et al., 2018), at least when they use effective communication strategies (Harris et al., 2019; 2011). However, work with couples has not examined the specific mechanisms underlying such benefits (see Barnier, Klein et al., 2018). A large body of research has examined the development and operation of TMSs in organisational teams who complete joint tasks (see Peltokorpi, 2012, for review). TMSs are proposed to rely on a range of cognitive structures as well as communication and interpersonal processes (Wegner, 1987; 1995). This research has identified three key components that contribute to successful transactive memory and on which teams can be measured (Austin, 2003; Zhang et al., 2007). These components are specialisation, coordination, and credibility, which capture the distribution of information within a TMS as well as processes of information sharing (Hewitt & Roberts, 2015).
These key components were derived from organisational teams, and so far, it is not known whether they apply well to intimate couples, whose cognitive and relational goals within TMSs are quite different. For instance, organisational teams are likely to prioritise efficiency and minimise redundancy, whereas couples are likely to prioritise intimacy and therefore may not value specialisation to the same extent. In the current study, we asked older couples to describe their everyday shared remembering. We looked for evidence of these three components – specialisation, coordination, and credibility – to understand how TMSs operate for longstanding intimate groups who jointly complete day-to-day tasks.
Components of Transactive Memory
Specialisation
Wegner’s theory specified two kinds of knowledge within TMSs: (1) integrated information that is shared in common by members of the group, and (2) differentiated information, which is more specialised and unique to one member (Wegner et al., 1985). Groups vary in the extent to which individuals within them show specialisation but in organisational teams, specialisation is a key component of successful performance (Barnier, Klein et al., 2018). In intimate couples, the appropriate balance between integration and differentiation is less understood. For instance, partners may develop similar, overlapping memory organisation for autobiographical memory, a quality useful for agreement, shared meaning-making, and joint identity formation when reminiscing about shared life events (Alea & Bluck, 2003; Harris et al., 2010; Pasupathi et al., 2002). In other circumstances, specialisation and divided responsibility for remembering certain things may prove more useful, reducing redundancy and making cognitive labour more efficient (Hewitt & Roberts, 2015).
Patterns of divided responsibility can be driven by factors such as personality, gender norms, or cognitive decline. Prior research has suggested that gender may have particular impacts on perceived expertise and division of cognitive responsibility within male-female couples. Women are socialised to be more person-oriented and communally minded (Eagly, 2009). Women also are believed to be memory experts within most domains, apart from the most “stereotypically male” of tasks (Crawford et al., 1989; Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019). Gender differences have been found across laboratory memory tasks including autobiographical narration (Grysman & Hudson, 2013; Grysman et al., 2020), episodic detail (Wang, 2013), and memory for people’s appearance (Mast & Hall, 2006). Colley et al. (2002) reported gender differences for an everyday memory task (remembering a shopping list) depending on the gender stereotype associated with the content, with women outperforming men when the list was labelled as “groceries” but not as “hardware”. In terms of everyday memory tasks, women consistently outperform men (e.g., Ahn et al., 2017; Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019), especially when they are living in heterosexual partnerships (Niedźwieńska & Zielińska, 2021), and when goals are shared (Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019). Moulton-Tetlock and colleagues (2019) argued that these findings are best explained by a motivational account and not a difference in memory capacity per se; that is, women “expend more effort to attend and encode goals when there are other beneficiaries, presumably because they are socialised to be concerned with others’ outstanding needs” (p. 172). Taken together, this evidence suggests that normative gender roles contribute to assumptions about, responsibility for, and the development of experience-based expertise in memory for certain kinds of information or tasks. Resulting inequities in the division of cognitive labour extend beyond mnemonic tasks, with women providing more support and caregiving to male partners (Thomeer & Clark, 2021), and shouldering greater mental load than men within families (Dean et al., 2022). In the current research, we examined patterns of responsibility adopted by male-female couples, and particularly examined gender roles. We also examined a range of other ways that specialisation can arise, and the sources of expertise in the systems that couples themselves described.
Credibility
Effective TMSs require credibility, such that each partner trusts and automatically accepts contributions from the other (Lewis, 2003). While most conceptualisations of TMSs have focused on the structure of knowledge specialisation in groups, relatively few have systematically examined how credibility within groups develops and influences performance. However, there is some evidence from couples that relationship quality can influence joint memory. Barnier et al. (2014) found that young couples with higher reported relationship intimacy remembered more details about shared events compared to couples with lower intimacy scores. In the philosophical literature on extended mind, Clark and Chalmers (1998) argued that external resources become part of an individual’s cognition to the extent that their information is automatically endorsed, among other criteria (see also Harris et al., 2014), and these criteria apply well to long-standing couples (Harris et al., 2014; see also Tollefson, 2006). These findings support the possibility that relational aspects of trust and credibility are important components of TMSs in intimate couples. In the current research we examined the extent to which couples reported automatic endorsement and trust in their everyday memory sharing.
Coordination
The final key component of TMSs is communication between partners, which allows each to “know what the other knows” and enables them to effectively share and coordinate their remembering. Compared to the structural aspect of specialisation, and the relational aspect of credibility, coordination represents the processes of transactive memory in action during effective joint task performance. Previous research has empirically supported the importance of effective communication processes in enabling benefits of joint remembering in couples (Harris et al., 2011; 2019). In this prior research, coordination processes have been coded and scored from recordings of couples remembering together (e.g., Harris et al., 2011; 2019). What is less established is whether couples have insight into these coordination processes and can describe the ways they work together effectively on tasks. In the current research we examined what couples said about strategies they used to effectively coordinate their cognitive labour.
The Current Study
Although prior research has demonstrated some of the benefits that can accompany collaboration and have inferred the existence of a TMS among intimate couples, we know less about the ways that couples use their TMSs in everyday life and the components underlying such systems, because most TMS research has focused on organisational teams (Barnier, Klein et al., 2018; Hewitt & Roberts, 2015). In the current research, we aimed to understand what couples know about the ways in which they share and coordinate cognitive labour. We examined whether couples themselves reflected on their relationship using themes that were consistent with the theoretically developed dimensions of specialisation, credibility, and coordination when describing their shared remembering in day-to-day life. We aimed to extend upon and nuance these dimensions by applying them in the novel context of intimate couple relationships. In this study we used semi-structured interviews to better understand long-term couples’ unique memory ecologies as developed and lived in everyday life. We coded their responses for emergent themes, with a focus on theorised components of transactive memory.
Methods
Participants
Participants were 78 older adults aged 68–90 years (M = 74.74, SD = 5.10). They identified as 39 cisgender women and 39 cisgender men, making up 39 long-term male-female couples. These 39 couples were recruited via the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) Study of Ageing in Melbourne, Australia (see Ellis et al., 2009), as part of a program of research comparing individual and joint memory performance across a range of tasks [redacted]. We described the research to participants as follows: “Some of the tasks will be very similar to the tasks you have completed as part of your participation in the AIBL study, while other tasks will be new to you, and will involve you recalling events and details from your life. Our goal is to gain an in-depth understanding of how people remember both individually and together as a couple.”
Because cognitive impairment may impact patterns of responding, we recruited participants who were identified by AIBL as “healthy controls”, indicating normal cognitive function on neuropsychological screening as reported in Barnier, Harris et al. (2018). Participants completed the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly – Screening Version (HHIE-S; Ventry & Weinstein, 1982), a self-report measure of perceived social and emotional impacts of hearing loss, with 44 reporting no hearing difficulties, 27 reporting mild-moderate hearing difficulties, and 7 reporting severe hearing difficulties (Barnier et al., 2019). Men had an average of 15.21 years of education (SD = 4.30; range = 8–23 years). Women had an average of 13.70 years of education (SD = 3.82; range = 6–22). Of the 78 participants, 71 were retired from working and 7 were employed. All 78 spoke English as a first language. Couples had been married for between 13-65 years (M = 49.46, SD = 8.78). We note that the 13-year marriage was an outlier, and the next shortest relationship was 33 years. All couples were living together independently in their homes as a couple, with no one else. We did not formally record parental status but 34/39 couples mentioned their children and/or grandchildren during the course of participation. As reported in Barnier, Harris et al. (2018), couples reported high levels of relationship intimacy and quality.
Procedure
To conduct the he memory practices interviews, experimenters visited participants in their homes on two occasions separated by one week. The 2 experimenters were a researcher with training in clinical neuropsychology and an experienced research assistant, both practiced in providing a warm social context but minimal input and maintaining consistency across participants. All participants completed a range of individual and collaborative memory tasks across two sessions as part of a broader program of research, including word list recall, personal information, autobiographical memory, and a series of questionnaires and neuropsychological measures. The findings from these measures are reported elsewhere (Barnier, Harris et al., 2018; Grysman et al., 2020; Harris et al., 2019; Harris, Sutton et al., 2022). At the conclusion of the second experimental session (one week after the first), we conducted the memory practices interview (reported in this study) with both members of each couple together.
We conducted memory practices interviews asking couples to reflect on how they share remembering in their day-to-day lives. Using the same core set of questions for each couple, we prompted couples to talk about how they remember together, and to describe any individual or shared memory resources (such as diaries or calendars). We also asked couples to describe their respective strengths and weaknesses in relation to memory, if and how they rely on one another to remember, and what information they feel is particularly important to remember. We asked if they felt their memories ever conflict, and how such conflicts are resolved. Guiding questions appear in the Appendix. The interviews did not have any time limit but concluded when the core questions had been addressed, and lasted between 15–25 minutes.
Approximately 2 years later, the same experimental procedure adopted in the broader program of research was conducted again with 32 of the original 39 couples (the remainder did not take part due to relocation, unavailability, illness, or death; Barnier, Harris et al., 2018). The goal of the follow-up session was to assess long-term stability in the couples’ collaborative memory performance across a range of tests (Barnier, Harris et al., 2018). At the conclusion of the session, we conducted the follow-up interviews with both members of each couple together. During the follow-up interviews, we asked couples to reflect on any changes to how they remember together since the time of their initial interview (2 years prior). We aimed to understand how TMSs might change over time, particularly in the context of ageing and potential change in circumstances such as cognitive decline. The interviews did not have any time limit but concluded when the core questions had been addressed, and lasted between 5–15 minutes. There were no significant differences in age or MMSE scores between those participants who completed the follow-up and those who did not.
Both interviews were semi-structured, with the interviewer prompting elaboration and asking follow-up questions, as well as allowing participants to bring up any themes or share stories that they felt were relevant to the discussion.
Data Analysis
The interviews were audio-recorded with participant consent and transcribed for analysis. Responses were analysed using framework analysis, a tool for thematic analysis of qualitative data involving 5 stages: data familiarisation, framework identification, indexing, charting, and mapping and interpretation (Ritchie et al., 2013). We used the key components from transactive memory theory (Lewis, 2003) as sensitising concepts in our analysis, which suggested “directions along which to look” (Blumer, 1954, p. 7), while the content and properties of each theme were inductively derived. In particular, we were interested in exploring the attributes and nuances of: (1) specialisation, or discussion of the integration and differentiation of knowledge, perceptions about expertise, and where such expertise arose from; (2) credibility, or the ways in which a partner’s knowledge was accessed and accepted by the other partner; and (3) coordination, including ways that couples communicated and worked together to successfully accomplish memory tasks. In addition to these specific transactive memory components, we also identified and coded frequently mentioned themes relating to ageing, and how shared remembering changed in the context of changing life circumstances and cognitive abilities associated with older age. We included these in our analysis since TMSs may provide particular support in the case of ageing and may also adapt to changes in cognitive need with age and cognitive decline.
Familiarisation with the data was first conducted by reading and re-reading the interview transcripts. Themes were identified and used to code the data in NVivo 12 software (QSR International), in a process that involved adding or collapsing codes, and creating sub-codes, to capture conceptual overlap and differentiation among themes, until all data were accounted for. Themes were not mutually exclusive, with specialisation, credibility, and coordination interacting with each other. That is, credibility arises from effective specialisation and recognition of expertise. Similarly, expertise may have a range of sources with layers of influence from individual and social factors. In this way, there was overlap between themes and findings across themes complemented each other, as described in the Results below.
Results and Discussion
Specialisation
We identified a number of themes relating to specialisation – which included couples’ discussion of the integration and differentiation of knowledge, perceptions about expertise, and where such expertise arose from – which we review in turn below.
Diverse Strengths and Distinct Expertise
Couples emphasised divergent strengths that they used to supplement and support one another’s remembering, consistent with “differentiation” in their TMSs. The vast majority of couples (38/39) made a reference to their diverse abilities. These included comments such as “We know the things Grace is 1 good at and the things I’m good at – she’s got stronger points and I have weaker points and the other way around” [36M] or “There are certain memory tasks that I seem to be able to do a little bit better than Sarah, and there are some memory tasks that Sarah does infinitely better than me” [31M]. Diverse expertise was frequently viewed by couples as a strength of their relationship: “We compensate for one another … your forte is one thing and mine is another” [1M]; “Our memory processes are different, but we do complement each other” [32M].
When queried about distributed memory expertise, participants provided extensive detail about the particularities of their own and their partner’s strengths and weaknesses. These were often incredibly specific and related to everyday activities:
28F: Graham’s much better at remembering names of places and routes and cars and vehicles and trains and all this sort of stuff. And I’m much better at remembering, ‘that was the place where we met the lady with the red hair that did this’ or ‘we had the special fish dinner with the…’, you know?
Such elaborations were common across interviews, revealing that not only do long-term couples have differentiated knowledge, but they also have extensive metaknowledge – they know what one another know.
That is, couples appeared to have a strong sense of, and rehearsed narratives about, their individual strengths and weaknesses in terms of remembering in daily life. This usually resulted in one member of the couple effectively becoming the “expert” within a certain domain, such that their expertise would be sought after and trusted when their spouse needed assistance. Expertise could cover anything from memory for autobiographical events, names or telephone numbers, remembering how to perform a particular task such as spelling a word or operating a mobile phone, or being reliable in reminding their partner about an upcoming appointment.
One husband marvelled at how his wife had such a good narrative memory, he had come to rely upon her to remember his own ancestral history:
19M: Hazel amazingly remembers the detail of my family that I have to rely on – she remembers more than my sister and I. My extended family, why something happened and where… You ask Hazel about any of the artefacts round here, and she’ll tell you exactly where that came from and why and who.
Sometimes expertise was more task-oriented, as for this couple who sought one another’s assistance during certain activities:
39M: We’re not a bad team because I'm pretty good on numbers and Mary’s pretty good on words.
39F: Yes, it’s very useful if you want to check prices and work out percentages – Terry can do it all in his head. But he’ll ask me a simple word to spell, and it comes up in my head. I can see the word, same as he can see the numbers.
39M: It’s a team effort on everything, is’'t it?
39F: Yes, all the way through.
This expertise often became part of an identity narrative about each partner’s respective roles in the relationship, such that memory strengths were often fused to personal and professional identities:
13F: I rely on Ron to remember technical stuff… he looks after the cars, I look after the medical side. That was our field – you’re the engineer, I’m the nurse.
These comments were marked by a high level of agreement between husbands and wives – “credibility” as per the TMS scale (Lewis, 2003). It was rare that they contested one another’s assessments of what each were relatively good at – rather their responses were marked by frequent acknowledgement and elaboration. We even found that some couples used almost identical phrases to describe themselves and their respective roles across the two interviews (2 years apart), such as one husband [21M] who stated that “Julie’s good with people and I’m good with things” during the initial interview and “I’m a thing person and Julie is a people person” during the follow-up. The repetitive nature of statements like this provide evidence for entrenched and rehearsed narratives about expertise that seemed to remain relatively stable over time. Couples specialise, and they talk about that specialisation in consistent ways. We discuss this further under “Credibility” below.
Sources of Specialisation and Expertise
Individual Differences
Coding indicated that 28/39 couples mentioned individual innate personality traits as a reason for different responsibilities. For some, having a “good” memory was a skill to be valued or an integral part of their identity, while others didn’t place great importance on successful remembering. For example, one husband commented that his wife’s excellent memory was “one of her best things” [8M] to which she replied “Yeah, it’s a part of me” [8F]. Participants often linked successful recall to their level of motivation to remember. One woman explained how she was considered an expert in remembering important dates by her close friends, because she placed high importance on this information:
5F: I don’t care if I don’t remember going to the butcher’s yesterday, but as long as special things like birthdays and anniversaries, that’s the things that are important to me – I remember them to minute detail. I remember what everyone wore that day. All our friends ring me to say, ‘When is so-and-so’s anniversary?’ and they’ll say, ‘Ask Alison, she’ll remember’.
Another woman bemusedly suggested her husband’s impressive memory for astronomical trivia came at the expense of his attention to everyday memory tasks:
10F: He’s got an incredible memory for the stuff he’s interested in – he can spend two hours telling you all about which galaxies, how many light years from what, all that stuff. And people will say to me, ‘Gosh, how does he remember all that?’ and I just say, ‘Well, he can’t remember where his socks are’.
Interest and motivation were seen to impact not only memory aptitude, but also the need for routine and aids to support prospective remembering. For example, one man explained why he found it crucial to regularly maintain and check appointments in his calendar: “I’m almost obsessed by wanting to know what’s happening” [29M], whereas others took a more relaxed approach to their schedule: “I’ve come to the stage of life where routine’s not a big thing … I like to just go and do things” [24F].
Participants often explained their needs and expectations around organisation (particularly to support prospective memory) back to circumstances in childhood. For example, in response to her husband describing her as “quite organised”, one woman explained that it was having “a surgeon and a nurse” for parents that had fostered such behaviours:
27M: My mother used to make us tidy our drawers – she’d say, ‘Better get that sorted before your father comes around’. And his mantra that we grew up with day after day: ‘There is a place for everything, everything in its place’ – so that’s where I got that from.
While such behaviours undoubtedly relate to routines and habits implicating much more than just memory, participants told stories like this because they helped explain the roles that individuals took on in their married relationships, and in turn, these influenced their strategies and communication when remembering together.
Professional History
These practices and routines were also frequently linked back to professional history. We did not ask participants directly about their working lives, and most of our participants were retired at the time of interview – nevertheless, 23/39 couples cited their professional training and skills by way of explaining memory strengths:
18M: I’m good at numbers because I worked in the airline industry in the freight section, and it was all by 12-digit airway build number. I can recognise a number that I’ve seen weeks ago as being correct or incorrect.
Participants also identified mnemonic strategies learned during professional life that carried into personal life and often continued in retirement: “On some things [my memory’s] good – it’s the way I train myself. I was an engineer, so things with formulas and numbers, I do remember that.” [1M]. The habits and routines participants formed in professional life continued to impact their organisational systems and external resource use. One couple had both worked as teachers, and reported adopting a similar system to one another:
14F: I keep a diary
2
, always have … Teachers are like that. I still keep a diary.
14M: Yeah, our work is like that. We’ve become habituated to keeping a diary and we still both keep our own diaries.
But in other cases, partners had different approaches which informed how they used shared memory resources, and who took greater responsibility for maintaining and checking these:
7M: She looks after the diary. I just put [my things] in there so it doesn’t get double-booked.
7F: [whispering] Sometimes he doesn’t remember. I was an office manager, secretary – so it’s in my nature to keep diaries and see what’s coming up.
Gender Roles
Gender was a clear factor that impacted shared remembering in both direct and indirect ways. The sociocultural particularities of our participants (older, living in male-female partnerships, married, English-speaking) were such that the respective roles taken on by women and men in these relationships often adhered to overarching gendered norms. Less than a third of couples (11/39) made specific reference to gender as a source of expertise. Yet there was substantial similarity across couples regarding tasks husbands or wives took as primary responsibilities, reflecting societal gender roles about who does what.
For each couple we noted where one partner was explicitly described as “expert” in different domains and found that distinctly gendered patterns emerged. For example, 14 women (but only two men) were described as the expert in managing the couple’s social lives, including keeping in touch with family and friends, and arranging social outings. Similarly, 16 women (but 0 men) were described as being the expert at remembering birthdays and anniversaries, which often included responsibility for correspondence and gift-giving.
Women’s responsibilities for managing couples’ social lives were endorsed in a number of ways, including the belief that women had better memories in general, were better at multi-tasking, and had greater aptitude for remembering social information specifically. As one husband explained:
8M: My memory’s nowhere near as good as Betty’s, and you tend to allocate roles... like most women in partnerships remember things like birthdays and anniversaries, do the social things and I’m bloody hopeless at that. Betty’s certainly got a better memory than I have.
Other participants agreed that “it’s usually the woman that remembers birthdays” [15F], that correspondence is “a woman’s job” [1M], and that “a lot of husbands rely on their wives to [organise] social things” [16F].
In contrast, men were more often responsible for managing couples’ finances and paying bills, household repairs, and garden maintenance. Among the 39 couples, 12 men (but only 3 women) were described as holding primary responsibility for managing the couple’s finances. Many couples described the husband as having a more spatial memory, which was frequently linked to aptitude for tasks such as wayfinding and navigation. Men were often considered to have better knowledge for technical information or facts: “all that sort of objective, organised … male brain stuff” [30F]. Couples’ perceptions about gender-linked differences in their mnemonic interests and abilities influenced the division of memory responsibility between partners.
Where men reported forgetting a social obligation, they were much more likely to put this down to a lack of interest or motivation than women. Interestingly, a number of husbands made this observation about themselves, with comments such as: “I probably only remember things I think are – it’s a bit egocentric – essential to me” [19M], “I have a strong memory…for things that matter to me” [32M], and “if it doesn’t interest me, I don’t remember it” [9M]. In practice this meant it tended to fall on wives to remember communal goals, obligations, and engagements, while some husbands only took responsibility for remembering things that involved and implicated them alone. One couple explained how this played out when it came to keeping up with mutual friends:
8M: I only remember things important to me.
8F: Yeah, that’s really true. I’ll say, ‘Tom’s partner just had an operation, did you ring her?’ ‘Oh no’. And he’s happy to do it, but he doesn’t think to do it.
A particularly tech-savvy couple used synchronised Microsoft Outlook (computerised) calendars so that appointments entered by one person would automatically appear for the other. However, this husband explained that he largely entered his own appointments, while his wife took charge of entering shared events:
E
3
: Is one person more responsible for reminding the other?
2M: Well, if they’re joint things, Linda is definitely the Outlook queen. But I have a few individual things and I look after them myself.
2F: Yeah, he’s an apprentice Outlook queen.
These patterns lend support to the idea that women in female-male partnerships tend to take on greater responsibility for mnemonic labour that has communal (rather than individual) benefit than do their male counterparts (Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019). Overall, our findings suggested that gender contributed to assumptions about, responsibility for, and the development of experience-based expertise in certain memory domains. Specialisation and expertise shaped by gender went on to shape gendered patterns of responsibility for remembering, a theme we will return to in later sections.
In summary, we found evidence for a range of sources of expertise and specialisation in TMSs, including personality and individual characteristics, life experience such as professional background, as well as social roles – particularly gender.
Credibility
We also identified themes relating to credibility – or the extent and ways in which one partner’s knowledge was accessed and accepted by the other partner.
Shared Histories and Intuitive Connection
Couples recognised that uneven expertise afforded them reciprocal opportunities to assist one another, and often identified as a “team” when it came to memory, mentioned by 20/39 couples. This teamwork was usually framed as something more intuitive than explicit – patterns that had developed over the course of their many years together:
E: Can you tell us about how you remember together?
1M: It’s hard to define!
1F: Well, it’s the only way we know, and it’s sort of grown over the decades and we’re not aware of what we do.
1M: Well, we’ve spent a lot of time together.
Several couples talked about having an “uncanny” connection or being “mind-readers”, in that their thoughts and routines had become incredibly synchronised over time. When asked if he relied on his wife to remember, one husband simply stated, “Well, she’s part of me, that’s the whole thing, wouldn’t do anything without her” [6M]. Another couple described how they shared so much history they had their own “vocabulary” to cue one another’s autobiographical memory:
18M: We’ve got a very rich vocabulary of associated words. We’ll say a particular word which has nothing to do with the context of what we’re talking about … We had one this morning where we said, ‘the cemetery!’ That’s because we know there’s a house next to the cemetery where she used to live and then…
18F: Yeah, associated it.
18M: So we’ve got a very rich vocabulary in that way. Little memory points, connection points, so we don’t have to say ‘Oh, it was the lady with the brown hair that we saw on Sunday’. No, it was the one who lived next to the cemetery. And there’s a host of these things.
18F: Yep, that’s true.
18M: That’s part of our language.
This example beautifully illustrates one way in which intimate partners, who have spent decades sharing their day-to-day lives, are able to reap the benefits of their wealth of shared autobiographical experience (c.f. Barnier et al., 2014).
Reliance and Vicarious Benefit
The extent to which participants benefitted from their partner’s remembering wasn’t always as explicit as the examples above, however. While some participants reported that they themselves had little use for external memory resources, it became clear through conversation that they vicariously benefitted from their partner’s use of such resources, as they relied on their partner to remind them of upcoming appointments instead of monitoring these themselves (Harris, Sutton et al., 2022). We identified references to vicarious benefit in 31/39 couples, for example:
13F: Yes, I use a diary every day.
13M: I don’t.
13F: No, and that’s why you forget things. You depend on me!
13M: I do.
13F: You do, you depend on me to remind you of all appointments and where we’re going, when he’s gotta be home, and if we’re going out, what time he’s gotta be there! It’s always me.
Vicarious benefit was gendered, such that of the 31 couples who mentioned such benefit, 18 referenced the man benefiting from the woman’s efforts, 10 mentioned reciprocal benefits, and 3 mentioned the woman benefiting (see also Harris, Sutton et al., 2022).
Participants recognised the subtle but significant ways they relied on their partner to remember, such that several made comments about how difficult their lives might be without them:
16F: If I go, you won’t be able to find your way around!
16M: When you go, yes. So I’ll have to go first.
Individuals had come to know and rely on their partner’s efforts and expertise, including when their partner kept reliable external records, and therefore modified their own behaviour as they both relied and were relied upon within the TMS. Clark and Chalmers (1998) argued that external resources become part of an individual’s cognition to the extent that their information is automatically endorsed. Couples’ reliance on and vicarious benefit from one another’s expertise was evidence of automatic endorsement, in that they accepted (implicitly or otherwise) the knowledge offered by their partner, as in the example above (“You depend on me! I do”), as well as the examples of reliance in the next paragraph. In this way, a close other, such as a spouse, might meaningfully be considered a kind of resource and an extended part of one’s own cognition.
Compensation and Effort to Remember
Couples reported that the ability to rely on a partner in this way conferred great benefit, as they were able to offload cognitive labour for things their partner remembered. Responsibility and reliance therefore impacted the amount of effort that partners expended to remember certain things. Sometimes this meant less effort: “I don’t remember phone numbers … I can ask Jim, he knows” [17F]; “I have to be honest and say that because Denise is so good with dates, I don’t really make an attempt to try and remember them at all, because I don’t need to” [14M]. But for areas in which one was being relied upon, it could entail more effort: “Brian’s memory’s never been as good as mine, so I always make sure I’ve got everything written down” [1F]; “Grace is much smarter in these things – she makes a bigger effort because I rely on her” [36M]. Members of couples were therefore sensitive to domains in which they could offload and domains in which they needed to be accurate because their partner relied on them. Where an individual recognised the need to compensate for their partner, they took greater care to remember. Therefore, being part of a TMS doesn’t necessarily bestow lower effort overall, but rather effort might be spread unevenly across individuals and domains.
Coordination
Several themes emerged relating to couple’s coordination – which included the ways couples communicated and worked together to successfully accomplish memory tasks.
Routines and Systems
One way that couples successfully coordinated their remembering, particularly for upcoming tasks and appointments (prospective memory), was by following established shared routines. Because the couples interviewed were mostly retired and had been cohabiting for many years, they tended to have well-established shared daily routines including having engagements that occurred at the same time each week, or a designated day to complete tasks such as laundry. Many participants suggested that routine made remembering easier, with one man explaining, “If we know there’s a routine that’s followed … we know we’ve got the bases covered, we won’t have forgotten something” [19M]. These routines frequently included daily rituals for checking memory resources and reminding one another about upcoming events. For example, one woman explained how her husband helped her keep track of her schedule:
5F: Russell’s my secretary, he looks at [the diary] lots of times. At breakfast he tells me what I’m doing for the day. While I’m out for my walk, he looks up what we’re doing … and he’ll say, ‘Do you know you’ve got an appointment at such and such?’
Among these mnemonic habits and rituals, couples reported a whole host of idiosyncratic, shared systems to support and coordinate their remembering. For example, one couple used small notes posted about the house to remind themselves of outstanding tasks:
3F: We write notes. I’ve got charity stuff to be picked up, so I’ve got a written note there to say ‘Charity pickup Friday morning’ – because whoever comes down first has to put them outside.
Sometimes these strategies were developed in tandem, but in other cases, one person had taught the strategy to their partner and it became shared:
33M: I’m very methodical, I always put things in an allocated space – wallet, car keys, etcetera.
33F: Jim has taught me to do that. I used to annoy him, because I never knew where my keys were, I never knew where anything was. Now I have a spot for them, so that’s helpful.
For many, it was important to keep diaries and calendars up to date, as couples used external resources as proxy to communicate about appointments in the event they weren’t able to ask their partner directly.
14F: We keep our own diary, and we put things in each other’s diaries because we might have something that clashes. Like Ronald invited a friend for dinner – but the rule is it’s got to go in my diary or I won’t know.
14M: So I checked Deb’s diary while I was on the phone to him, to make sure she didn’t have anything on.
In this way external memory resources like diaries and calendars became an extension of the in-person communication (monitoring, checking, reminding) necessary for partners to coordinate their highly interconnected lives.
Reminders and Cuing
Reminding was also a crucial strategy couples used to keep on top of upcoming tasks and activities, and formed a habit where partners assisted and relied on their partner to assist them, with 35/39 couples mentioning the ways in which they remind each other: “We remind each other before we go to bed, ‘don’t forget tomorrow we’ve got to be at such and such’” [31F]. Reminding behaviour was gendered, with many more couples reporting that the wife reminded the husband of upcoming appointments:
32M: If it’s a non-business appointment she'll remind me well in advance and say, “don’t forget, tomorrow don’t make any commitments – we’ve got to do so and so”. She’s excellent in that regard.
Men tended to report keeping track of their own individual tasks and appointments, while women were more likely to remind their husbands about tasks and activities for which they were not the sole beneficiary (i.e., their husband’s goals and shared goals):
7F: Oh, well I remind you, but you don’t remind me.
7M: Well sometimes if there’s an important one coming up I’ll keep track of it.
7F: If it involves you…
7M: Yeah.
Overall, it appeared that different couples had different ways of organising and sharing responsibility for reminding. Some reported it was a reciprocal endeavour that they both engaged in and relied upon, while others seemed to have a designated “reminder” who took on this responsibility to the benefit of their partner.
10F: How do we remember? I remind him, he rarely has to remind me. … So he doesn’t have to remember anything because I remember.
Participants’ extensive knowledge of their partner also made them effective at cueing in moments of forgetting, mentioned by 26/39 couples. Their shared histories meant that with the right cue from their partner, one could access autobiographical memory that might otherwise be forgotten (at least in the moment):
36M: When Grace mentions the detail it all comes back to my memory. That’s been the story of our life, hasn’t it?
Couples viewed cueing as an important part of their conversations and another process by which they could remember more as a team than they might be able to independently:
19M: The dialogue [between us] is tremendously assisting in remembering a certain thing … We get blocks, but because there’s two minds working on it and they’re communicating, you get there without too much frustration.
Communication (e.g., coordinating, reminding, cueing) was seen as fundamental to remembering well together. This is consistent with prior research on the features of collaborative communication that are associated with successful joint remembering (Harris et al., 2011; 2019). The current findings suggest that couples can explicitly reflect on and report their beneficial coordination and communication behaviours, in addition to showing behavioural evidence of them.
Remembering Together Over a Lifetime
In addition to the core aspects of TMSs – specialisation, credibility, and coordination – couples also reflected on the ways in which their memory systems had shifted over time, in particular with cognitive changes brought about by ageing. Couples’ nuanced reflections on their joint remembering processes also highlighted that successful remembering was just one goal of their collaboration, and was balanced with the need to maintain a quality relationship. This highlights the ways in which TMSs may operate differently in intimate groups compared to organisational groups, where there are relational goals beyond efficiently sharing cognitive labour.
What Does it Mean to Remember “Well” Together?
Knowing when to remind one’s partner is not always straightforward. A useful reminder has to (a) remind about something your partner might have forgotten, and (b) be delivered at an appropriate time. For example, if you remind your partner about a task they remember needs doing but have not completed yet, this might be considered ‘nagging’ (see Ahn et al., 2017; Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019). So while partners rely on each another for memory support, they must balance the need to remember effectively with a sensitivity to their partner’s mnemonic needs and the best ways to meet them. For instance, someone who has momentarily forgotten a word during conversation might want their partner to intercept and contribute the forgotten word – or conversely, they might prefer their partner wait a few moments to allow time for them to recall the word on their own. To navigate this balance, couples develop mutual understanding and idiosyncratic patterns of communication which they frequently described in detail during our interviews:
28F: We do interrupt each other and not get offended about it because we understand that we’re trying to put something across without forgetting – something that we think the other person should know.
28M: We cut across, but we don’t cut off.
28F: We cut across…no, we don’t cut off. We…
28M: While the other one’s trailing off, we’ll chime in.
28F: Whereas you wouldn’t do that with other people because you don’t want to be rude, and it would be seen as rude.
Getting communication “right” and developing mutual understanding was essential for couples to remember well together, and to avoid conflict in their relationship. While the goals of remembering together include successful recall and division of cognitive labour, there are other goals, too – such as maintaining a happy relationship, enjoying reminiscence, and providing a partner with support only when it is needed or desired.
Adapting in the Face of Cognitive Change
As might be expected among our older-adult participant group, the sense that one’s memory had declined with ageing was very common, with most couples making reference to memory difficulties during both initial and follow-up interviews. Participants tended to express a feeling of frustration or annoyance with themselves in moments of memory failure: “it’s a source of frustration” [37M], “it’s an annoyance” [13F], “it’s annoying more than anything” [15F].
In terms of adaptation in transactive memory, we found that couples’ divided expertise, responsibility, and strategies for remembering seemed to be relatively stable over time as reflected by similarities between the initial and follow-up interviews, for most of the couples whose life circumstances were similar on both occasions. However, there were particular cases in which gradual or sudden cognitive change had introduced a need for TMSs to adapt. This could entail an increasing reliance on external resources:
25M: I’m saying to myself, “You’ve got to be more disciplined, because you don’t remember” … I realise the importance of it even more – I’ve got to have the systems.
Sometimes this meant a gradual shift in roles and responsibilities as one member of the partnership felt their memory deteriorating, and their partner made increasing efforts to compensate for their decline.
E: So you’re more in charge of the diary – has that always been the case?
29M: Oh, only in recent times … Pamela’s memory is not as good as it used to be, so it’s my turn next.
Sometimes shared systems would have to adapt to more rapid change, as in cases of sudden injury.
11F: Things have changed so much since my stroke. In the past, he relied on me to remember names, ‘Who was that that came last week?’ and so on.
Such examples reveal that when individuals experienced cognitive decline affecting memory function, their intimate partners could act as a crucial memory support, and that these supports grew out of their existing shared systems and responsibilities.
General Discussion
We aimed to understand whether the theoretical construct of transactive memory and its components, well-characterised in organisational groups (Lewis, 2003; Peltokorpi, 2012), were meaningful to long-term couples and their memory sharing practices in day-to-day life. Overall, our sample of long-married older couples resoundingly conceptualised themselves as a memory team or system, in which cognitive labour was coordinated in rich and complex ways to accomplish the tasks of everyday life. We found evidence that the components of specialisation, credibility, and coordination had strong relevance to these couples and their division of cognitive labour, and we identified a number of patterns providing novel insights into how TMSs take shape in everyday contexts. Prior research on transactive memory within organisational teams has largely focused on measuring group performance, and assumed efficient and successful recall to be the ultimate goal of a well-functioning TMS. However, our research, returning to Wegner’s (1987) original conception of transactive memory within close personal relationships, highlights how the processes of remembering together in everyday contexts share other goals, too – such as enjoying reminiscence, fostering intimacy, and maintaining relationship quality (c.f. Alea & Bluck, 2003) – yet these factors are rarely accounted for within existing studies of transactive memory.
A further contribution of this research was charting the ways in which specialisation can arise, particularly in “organic” groups (such as intimate couples) who are not selected to form a team based on pre-existing criteria or knowledge, as in organisational contexts. Couples frequently spoke to their diverse expertise and domains in which they relied on one another’s strengths. We found evidence that such specialisation arose from a range of sources, with overlapping influence from both individual and social factors including gender, professional experience and training, as well as interest and motivation. It was clear that couples possessed a detailed, shared map of how knowledge was distributed between them, and their relative strengths and weaknesses when it came to memory. Their descriptions were marked by a high level of agreement which showed that partners placed credibility in one another’s expertise. Couples described complex strategies for remembering and reminding that involved systems of coordination. These systems were idiosyncratic and included explicit strategies such as checking calendars, cueing, and reminding – but also the more intuitive work of knowing what a partner was good at, or usually responsible for, and therefore being able to forgo effort in those domains in order to lighten one’s own cognitive load.
The role of gender was a prominent theme throughout our findings, shaping patterns of perceived expertise and responsibility for remembering, as well as reminding behaviour. We found that the division of mnemonic responsibility among couples frequently conformed to overarching gendered norms, such as women taking greater responsibility for social scheduling, while men were more likely to oversee paying bills. Moreover, as previously reported in Harris, Sutton et al. (2022), women in this cohort were more likely to manage external resources such as calendars, while men more frequently reported vicarious benefit or reliance on their wives. In particular, we found evidence supporting previous findings that women in female-male partnerships tend to take on greater responsibility for mnemonic labour that has communal (rather than individual) benefit than do their male counterparts (Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019). These findings reflect the characteristics of this sample which included older adults living in female-male marriages, but echo existing research about gendered patterns of memory expertise and responsibility, with women taking on a disproportionate share of cognitive labour within heterosexual relationships (Ahn et al., 2017; Dean et al., 2022; Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019; Niedźwieńska & Zielińska, 2021; Thomeer & Clark, 2021). Mnemonic labour is one aspect of the disproportionate cognitive and emotional “mental load” shouldered by women within heterosexual relationships. The gender inequity of this “invisible work” has received increasing attention, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been theorised as potentially damaging to women’s health and wellbeing (e.g., Dean et al., 2022). Our findings indicate that entrenched patterns of expertise that arise earlier in relationships mean that women continue to take primary responsibility for cognitive labour within male-female relationships into older age and post-retirement, despite children reaching adulthood.
Among our sample, it was clear that couples’ joint systems for remembering develop over years of shared experience and shift in relation to a whole host of factors such as changing lifestyles, routines, or cognitive abilities. We also found evidence of entrenched narratives regarding expertise and responsibilities, suggesting that many aspects of couples’ systems had remained relatively stable over time. This chimes with recent work from Thomeer and Clark (2021) observing that couples’ dynamics of support remain stable throughout a relationship. In the context of ageing, with changes in circumstances and abilities, couples reported that their TMSs were flexible enough to adapt to changing needs. This finding extends work on organisational groups where roles are more defined, to organic groups like couples, and suggests that TMSs can shift with changes in cognitive abilities. Our findings about couples’ self-reported reliance on shared memory systems reinforce the notion that one’s partner can act as important scaffold in the face of age-related cognitive decline (Rauers et al., 2011). Future research could examine the balance between stability and flexibility in roles in effective TMSs. Because individuals in romantic partnerships constitute part of a TMS, their cognitive trajectories throughout the lifespan, especially later in life, are linked (Gerstorf et al., 2009), and therefore everyday processes of memory are fruitfully understood in the social context of their relationship. Notably, however, the couples interviewed in this study reported high levels of relationship intimacy and quality, which no doubt influenced the structure and success of their shared memory systems. It is unclear how TMSs might manifest differently in relationships where partners report lower intimacy or satisfaction, and the impact of such individual relationship factors would be a valuable research question to follow up.
The current study had strengths and limitations. Several scholars have advocated a qualitative research approach for the unique insights it can afford in the study of family relationships (Sabey et al., 2016; Ganong & Coleman 2014). We were able to elicit in-depth reflections from couples that were not constrained by pre-existing measures, and to add nuance to the conceptual framework of TMS, with insights into where specialisation comes from and how it operates, as well as how TMSs can change over time and with changing circumstances. However, there were a range of limitations that could provide fruitful avenues for future research. We only interviewed couples together, and after they had completed a range of other memory tasks, including recalling the names of mutual friends which may have primed gender roles. Future research could examine the role of agreement between couples’ descriptions of their TMSs when interviewed separately, as well as agreement between couples’ descriptions and actual performance on a range of everyday cognitive tasks. All couples had very longstanding relationships (all multiple decades long apart from one), and all reported high relationship intimacy. Therefore, we could not assess the impact of factors such as relationship length and quality, and these may provide useful directions for further research. It is likely that people who engage in new late-life relationships have quite different patterns of specialisation, credibility, and coordination than those who are in long-standing relationships. All couples were cognitively healthy when recruited, and TMSs may change further in the face of cognitive decline.
Overall, our findings support the view of older couples as systems of cognition, with theoretical and practical implications. We found evidence that the theorised components of TMSs, previously well studied in organisational teams, apply well to long-married couples and the way they understand cognitive labour in their relationships. These findings lay the groundwork for future research on how different factors such as relationship length and quality can impact these components. Our qualitative investigation revealed nuances in the application of these components to couples, particularly noting the range of individual and social factors that can create patterns of specialisation in couples, as well as the changes in TMSs that can arise from cognitive ageing. Conceptualising couples as a unit can provide new insights into how intimate relationships can facilitate effective cognitive functioning with age, with practical implications for supporting people to age well. For example, understanding the ways in which older couples are interdependent cognitive systems can highlight the impacts of partner loss on cognition and identity (e.g. Harris et al., 2021), and understanding the components of effective TMSs can yield novel methods for training other conversational partners to provide memory support, for example with a view to improving relationship-based aged care (e.g. Harris, Van Bergen et al., 2022). Our findings suggest that a lifetime of sharing cognitive labour yields TMSs in older couples that are characterised by specialisation, coordination, and communication, with both cognitive and relational benefits.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE150100396, FT120100020).
Open research statement
As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the author(s) have provided the following information: This research was not pre-registered. The data used in the research are not available. The materials used in the research are available. The materials can be obtained by emailing: