The Internet is a widespread resource used by millions of people everyday, but is it possible that this helpful resource is actually changing how we remember things? Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia, performed a study to discover how likely people are to remember something if they knew they could also find it on a computer.
Dr. Sparrow and her co-researchers, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments.
In one of the experiments, test subjects used the Internet to research 40 trivia facts. Half of the subjects were told the information would be saved in the computer, while the other half believed the items they typed would be erased. Researchers discovered that the subjects were significantly more likely to remember information if they thought they would not be able to find it later. The researchers wrote, “Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read,”
In another experiment, a concept known as “transactive memory” was tested. This concept theorizes that human beings rely on other people and outside resources to store information for them. In this experiment the participants were asked to remember both the trivia statements and which of five color-coded computer folders they were saved in. The researchers were surprised to find that participants were better able to recall the location.
Dr. Sparrow stated that the Internet’s effects on memory are still largely unexplored, yet she believes that this new trend might make us smarter by reserving brainpower for understanding the big picture, rather than wasting energy trying to memorize facts. Sparrow reported to U.S. News and World Report, “If you take away the mindset of memorization, it might be that people get more information out of what they are reading, and they might better remember the concept.”
It is interesting to learn how much electronics are changing, not just the lives, but also the internal workings of human beings. As our dependence on technologic resources continues to grow, how much more will our thinking processes change? Could our minds become lazy and not feel the need to store information, as the information will always be found at our fingertips? Will we lose all sense of direction as our navigational devices tell us every turn to make? I guess we will just have to wait and see.