Photography can weaken memory

Study: Much photography in the museum clouds the memory

12/11/2013

„Take a lot of pictures so as not to forget anything“ is the motto of many tourists. However, US psychologists recently found that the opposite is the case. According to this, people who took a lot of photos during a visit to a museum could not remember details much better than people who did not take a constant snapshot.

Taking pictures distracts and clouds the memory
Many a tourist prefers to spend his holidays taking photographs, in order to document everything as precisely as possible for those who stayed at home. In times of high-capacity digital cameras, a few hundred or even a thousand photos can easily come together.

Linda Henkel of Fairfield University in Connecticut and her colleagues have studied this phenomenon more closely. They found that frequent photography has a negative effect on memory. They observed that hobby photographers could not remember so much as people who did not take photos during a museum visit. „People have so much to do with their camera that sometimes they do not notice what's happening right in front of their eyes, "says Henkel, adding that this observation was the trigger for her to investigate whether camera use actually affects memory.

For their study, psychologists asked students to participate in a tour of the Bellarmine Museum of Art at Fairfield University, with some taking pictures and others not. The following day, the researchers tested the memory of the subjects and came to a clear conclusion.„When the participants took a picture of each object as a whole, they remembered fewer objects, fewer object details, and less resemblance to the location of the objects in the museum than if they were looking at the objects instead of photographing them“, the researchers write in the journal „Psychological Science ". „However, as subscribers zoomed in to photograph a particular part of an object, their ability to recognize and remember the detail was not affected.“

Smartphones have a similar effect on memory as photography
Mobile phones have a similar effect on the memory. While it used to be part of everyday life to remember phone numbers, these are nowadays simply stored in the smartphone. Many people can not even remember two or three phone numbers. You have it „unlearned“. „When people rely on technology, it has a negative impact on their memory“, explains Henkel. Nevertheless, photos could also have a positive effect on the memory of a museum visit. But above all, keeping a large amount of photos from looking at them later and remembering the event. (Ag)