Dr Dougal Sutherland: Are you suffering from digital amnesia?

From Saturday Morning with Jack Tame · 10:24

Show by Newstalk ZB

Are you suffering from Digital Amnesia? Most of us use smartphones constantly and many of us take screenshots on our phones or devices as a way of saving information. In effect, screenshots have become a form of digital memory storage. Researchers have long known about the "photo-taking impairment effect": people often remember photographed information less well than information they simply observe. This study asked whether the same thing happens with screenshots and, even if it was true could screenshots help improve performance somewhere else. The researchers got participants to look at artwork and other images viewed artwork and images on their smartphones. Sometimes they simply looked at the images. Other times they were instructed to take a screenshot. Across all participants, memory was worse for screenshots than for images that were simply viewed. In one experiment participants correctly recognised about 60% of screenshotted images, compared with substantially better performance for images that had only been viewed. The memory impairment appeared whether participants expected a memory test or not. The researchers describe this as a robust form of digital amnesia. Simply pressing the screenshot buttons appeared to reduce how thoroughly the information was encoded into memory. But maybe, even if people didn’t remember the image itself, they could at least remember that they had stored it somewhere? The study found the opposite. Participants were actually worse at remembering whether an image had been screenshotted or merely viewed. Screenshotting impaired memory not only for the content itself but also for details about the experience of seeing it. Another experiment tested whether screenshotting would reduce mental workload and improve performance on a difficult maths task completed afterwards – this is the idea of cognitive off-loading. I’m freeing up mental space by contracting out my memory and therefore have more brain power for other things. Again, the answer was no - people who took screenshots performed no better on the subsequent mental tasks than people who simply viewed the images So why might screenshotting hurt memory? Strongest explanation seems to be that the act of taking a screenshot may subtly signal to the brain: "I don't need to remember this. It's stored elsewhere." As a result, attention disengages from the information before it is fully encoded into memory. This would explain why both memory for the item and memory for its context become weaker. The findings do not mean screenshots are bad. If you take a screenshot and later review it, the screenshot can still serve as a useful memory aid, much like notes, calendars, or reminders. The study focused primarily on information that was captured but never revisited. But it does show that screenshots are not a free substitute for memory. The concept of digital amnesia is simple: when we believe information is stored somewhere safely, we may rely less on our own memory. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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