# Collaborative Facilitation and Collaborative Inhibition in Virtual Environments
## 1 Introduction  
Many activities or tasks that take place in both organizational and social contexts require collaboratively recalling information [1]. This collaborative process may be influenced by the medium (face-to-face--FtF communication vs. computer-mediated communication--CMC) used to interact and communicate information [2]. All over the world organizations have already changed their procedures in a disruptive way due to the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution. Moreover, the global emergency COVID-19, which is still ongoing, has certainly fostered a wide adoption of teleworking methods [3] to cope with the new social organization in the world required by the pandemic. From a psychological point of view, understanding the real impact of VEs on the dynamics of teamwork [4; 5], in terms of collaborative inhibition and collaborative facilitation, has become a core issue.  
The collaborative recall paradigms were typically developed to evaluate the costs (i.e., collaborative inhibition) and benefits (i.e., collaborative facilitation) of remembering in a group context (e.g., the percentage of studied stimulus accurately recalled) [6]. Within this approach, the majority of the studies have assessed the impact of recalling with someone else, comparing the results of collaborative groups to the outcomes of nominal groups (i.e., the sum of the outputs of non-interacting individuals) or individuals alone [7; 8]. [PERSON] et al. [9] stated that collaborative inhibition occurs if the individual underperforms what he/she could obtain working alone while collaborative facilitation is identified when an individual performs better in the group compared to what he/she would do alone. More specifically, in their review, the authors highlighted that increased memory coordination costs and retrieval disruption strategy are the main factors related to collaborative inhibition while building common ground among group members, activities/tasks gaining multiple perspectives and shared information related to the activities/tasks are key mechanisms associated with collaborative facilitation [9]. Through a systematic review [10], other researchers tested variables predicted by the retrieval disruption strategy (i.e., group size, type of retrieval, type of memory test, study materials, social relationship, category size, number of study/test phases, encoding task) in collaborative inhibition which was greater for larger groups, turn-taking retrieval and groups of strangers while it was weaker for forced-order tests and story-like materials [10]. This review also focused on post-collaborative memory. Results suggested, on one hand, a benefit on subsequent individual retrieval from prior collaborative retrieval and, on the other hand, a possible contribution of retrieval inhibition on collaborative inhibition [10].  
Based on the literature of collaborative recall and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), our study aims to investigate the impact of a VE on the recall of individuals and members of nominal and collaborative groups through a Virtual DRM classical paradigm. The research seeks to answer a key research question: does a VE such as a chat line mitigate the effect of collaborative inhibition? To answer this question, this study evaluated costs and benefits for collaborative retrieval by testing the effect of experimental conditions (individual, nominal and collaborative condition),stimulus materials, group size, order of experimental conditions, state of anxiety and personality traits, gender group composition and social interactions.