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Couples develop a 'shared' memory over time, researchers have found.

They say close partners have far more vivid memories when they are together.

Australian scientists also found that people were often able to help their partner remember an elusive name if they were close.

The mind meld: Couples develop a 'shared' memory over time, researchers have found, and say close partners have far more vivid memories when together.

The team from Macquarie University wrote: 'Across four studies, we examined shared remembering in intimate couples.'

Their data showed that on standard tasks, such as reproducing words from studied lists, couples working together often did as well as when they worked alone.

During another study, the researchers noticed that although couples did more poorly at listing their shared holidays when recalling together, these social sessions were filled with anecdotes and tangents that weren't generated in the solo sessions. 

The researchers, having noticed this, then began to test the couples on the amount of colourful, in depth information they remembered about events.

Crucially, events were also better remembered by partners who rated their intimacy as higher.

Those who structured their approach together and were more prepared to riff off the other's contributions did better than those who were more passive or critical.

They found these social exchanges led to clear benefits, including triggering  an elusive name of a musical thanks to a chain of prompts between the two parties.

Richer, more vivid descriptions of events including sensory information wwere also noted, along with an ability for one partner to paint things in a new light for the other.

'In everyday life remembering occurs within social contexts, and theories from a number of disciplines predict cognitive and social benefits of shared remembering,' the team said.

Events were also better remembered by partners who rated their intimacy as higher

'Recent debates have revolved around the possibility that cognition can be distributed across individuals and material resources, as well as across groups of individuals.

'We review evidence from a maturing program of empirical research in which we adopted the lens of distributed cognition to gain new insights into the ways that remembering might be shared in groups.

Celia Harris and colleagues at Macquarie University reviewed their previously published and new research on social remembering by long-term intimate couples.

'The authors note that older adults tend to experience the greatest memory difficulties with first-hand autobiographical information, rather than abstracted facts,' said the British Psychological Society.

'It's possible that as we grow older, we offset the unreliability of our own episodic systems by drawing on the memorial support offered by a trusted partner.

'This might explain why when one member of an older couple experiences a drop in cognitive function, the other soon follows.'