What smartphone photograph does in our memory

Sharing photos can subtly change what and how we remember.

Brian Resnick@B_resnick

March 28, 2018, 10:30 a.m. Eastern time

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What smartphone photograph does in our memory

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Although they may seem crystal clear in our minds, our memories are not an exact replica of the events that we observed.

Every time we recall a memory, we might accidentally change it or reduces its accuracy. Even trivial memories easily damaged with simple sentences. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus once found that when people say a car “ran” and not “hit”, they recalled the accident being more severe than he was.

The most difficult of all: we change these items and re-create reality, not realizing that we’re doing this. Seams and edited our memories in silence sealed; we often can’t remember what we cannot recall.

As a journalist, covering psychology, I always read about the failures of the mind precision. And it makes me nervous.

Two years ago, I got to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and took 400 pictures along the way. I was afraid that the images of the canyon path in the middle of the morning light and looked at the red-ochre and sand-coloured walls would slip from my memory and replaced with an approximation. So I leaned on the camera; her memory seemed crystalline, non-degradable.

But lately, I was wondering what happens to our memory when we begin to rely on smartphones more and more to document our lives. This question is not trivial: 77% of Americans own smartphones, and many rely on them to support memory. If the phone is quietly changing how the human memory works, the consequences will be widespread.

As with many topics in psychology, at the moment there are more questions than answers on this. But in many cases, the researchers found that the continuous photographing actually reduces our ability to recall our emotions, distracts our attention, and takes us at the moment. Constantly share photos maybe even change how we remember events in our lives.

At the same time, a new study suggests that the cameras can also be used to improve our memory certain experiences.

This study is in its early stages, but it also provides information about how we can best use smartphones: to strengthen our memories and our enjoyment of them.

As the photos may mess with our memories

The first step to forming a lasting memory to pay attention. Without attention, our brain does not store the sensations that we experience in the world around us.

The brain stores long-term memories, connecting neurons. The stronger the memory the stronger the Association. These neural connections all the sensations that shape memory: it seemed to me that he felt that smell.

But if we ignore it — even if we don’t get information in our short — term memory, nothing is stored long term in our brains.

Stanford memorial Church is the building that requires attention. Above the entrance is a giant, pastel mural of Jesus welcoming the worthy souls to Paradise. In this image of Paradise is palm trees. Inside the Church there is a mosaic, stained glass, and paintings of angels and saints than you can count on your hands and feet. He’s gorgeous. Even as forthcoming in the journal of experimental social psychology findings, it becomes easier to forget with a camera phone in tow.

In a series of experiments, several hundred participants took a self-guided tour of the Church. In the tour, the participants had to take note of details, as “cruciform Church” and make sure they checked the bronze angels “Welcome from the massive front door.”

Some of these participants were iPods equipped with cameras and were instructed to take photos (either print it or post it on Facebook). Other participants left empty handed.

A week after the tour, participants received a surprise-a quiz with questions about the details they learned on the tour. In one arm of the study, those without cameras have received about 7 out of 10 questions correctly. Those who had the camera scored closer to 6. It is like going from C To D, a small but significant difference.

“Just taking pictures in General was sufficient to reduce scores on a test of memory,” says Emma Templeton, Dartmouth psychological researcher who was the co-author of the study.

Why? The simple answer is that the camera is distracting. “It could just be that we use these devices, distracting myself from the experience, and because of this distraction, we don’t remember that we need to pay attention to,” says Templeton.

And because of the ubiquity of smartphones, “we just inserted into our daily lives potentially huge source of distraction.”

Templeton and her colleagues suspect that it’s not just cameras that are a source of distraction. Using any media during the event — Messages, tweets, etc. — can lead to memory lapses. Her research group also conducted a parallel research that enabled tighter control than in the Church, studies that have asked 380 participants, to view presentation. Overall, memory for the speech at the Ted conference has decreased in any condition where participants were instructed to take notes on the screen.

Overall, Templeton emphasizes that psychologists are only beginning to answer the question about how smartphones affect our cognitive abilities. “We had [digital] media and cameras for a while, but in the context [of] what we usually study, it’s really quite new, and the use of media is changing very rapidly,” she says.

In other words, the impact assessment of the smartphones on our cognitive abilities even harder from the fact that we are constantly changing how we use devices.

How much of my life I want to remember only my brain?

Another reason, takes photo, can save our memories-this idea is called cognitive offloading.

Simply put, it is the idea that we are literally outsourcing our intelligence to computers. In 2011, the journal Science published a study that is cool, I found when people say the computer will store some information, they are less likely to remember it for yourself. This experiment was only 60 participants and was conducted on a sample of College students, so the findings may have limited value. But You don’t have to look too far to find clear examples of cognitive outsourcing. How many people’s phone numbers do you remember?

Recently, more evidence for this idea go. In 2015, researchers of psychology at the University of Waterloo published an article entitled “brain in a pocket”. They found that people who avoid complicated, analytical styles of thinking are more likely to report relying on their smartphones to search for information. The results suggest that the use of computers in cognitive crutch is a common tactic.

“Many people, when they see our papers, I think, our argument is that smartphones make you stupid,” says Nathaniel Barr, the lead Author on the paper, now a Professor of psychology at Sheridan College. “Our favorite interpretation is that it’s actually a great way for a person who can be below cognitive abilities to increase the abilities of your brain.” If you are someone who is bad at remembering the route, You can still get on fine in the world. Smartphones, in this light, it seems like the new informative label.

And cognitive offloading may not be a bad thing if we are offloading something mundane. If your surgeon is looking at the next step for appendicitis on Google the middle of the operation, it is possible that this is a problem — but “someone took a shit that they don’t have to remember people’s phone numbers?” Barr says.

When it comes to taking photos, the issue of unloading is more complicated: how much of my life I want to remember only my brain?

“All the deals are off,” says Barr. “If you take a picture and share it, you will be able to relive this experience with others. If you do, it will be isolated in itself. There is good and bad about it. … As these technologies become more embedded in our lives, I think we charged more decisions about trade-offs.”

And this is where some of the most interesting research on cameras and memories lie: what we get and what we miss when we photographed all the time.

The biggest compromise: camera narrow our focus

Here are the nuances to take smartphone photography doesn’t make us stupid. This offset is how our minds work, by refocusing our attention.

Alixandra Barasch is a cognitive scientist at new York University. In her work she comes to the conclusion that, Yes, the incessant use of camera phones can lead to memory lapses. But, more importantly, she finds a wrinkle: the camera can also focus its attention to improve memory.

It to perform a similar study at Stanford, where participants either to photograph or not to photograph during a tour of the Museum. When instructed to take photos of the exhibition, its participants were more likely to remember the visual aspects of his experience (the art and artifacts that they have seen) than if they had not taken the photographs. But there is a tradeoff: participants snapping photos were less likely to remember the information they heard.

“Photos increase visual memories,” Barasch says, “but it does not come without a cost.” And that the cost of our attention. If we’re so focused on photos and video, we are likely to ignore other stimuli around us. And what is ignored is not remembered.

The Barasch study finds evidence that smartphones are changing what we see — they redirect or focusing our attention. In a small study, Barasch and colleagues outfitted the participants with eye-tracking devices, as they went on a tour of a Museum piece. The analysis showed that the Participants who were assigned to take photographs spent more time looking at the artifacts, and looked at more of them. They didn’t look at the floor and ceiling.

When we hunt popular Instagram shot, we’re not listening, we’re not smelling, we don’t always pay attention to the beautiful, complex things that are at the moment.

Other researchers found similar curious effect. In 2011, Fairfield University psychologist Linda Henkel found in the experiment that when participants were simply told to take photos in the Museum exhibit, their memory for the object and data on them is diminished. But when participants were told specifically to use the zoom function on the camera, and closer, their memories of the exhibits has improved.

The lesson here is that we are probably limiting our experience when we are so focused on our cameras.

Powerful experiences in the real world exciting and often involves all the senses. To your last vacation, you can remember what the wind felt like on the back? Do you remember what was happening inside: you’re excited, nervous or scared? When you look back at Instagram photos from the trip, you will remember that lunch for a taste, or was it just pretty?

Photographs and recordings will always be a thin slice of what you have experienced. “They don’t even have the true, full version of what happened,” says Henkel. When we look back on these photos, they serve as memory cues, but they do not have to remind us the whole story.

That exchange, so not a lot of pictures in our memory

In the last few years, we not only began to take more and more photos with digital cameras, but we also share them almost instantly on social media. It can change our memories, too — in a subtle but deep sense.

Barasch and colleagues found evidence that the photograph to share on social media change our perspectives in our memory. That is: when we take a photo to share on social media, we’ll probably remember this moment from the perspective of a third person.

“If I asked you to form a picture in your mind, Your Christmas experience” that you shared the photo in social networks, she explains, “then do you begin to visualize your Christmas more from the point of view of an outside observer.” (She and colleagues conducted an experiment with 332 students for the Christmas holidays.) The pictures we take just for our own archives not produce this effect as often.

The consequences of this are slim. For example, Barasch believes that focusing on photos can make the process of photographing less pleasant. This is possible because the exchange makes us more conscious. (Therefore, she recommends pausing a little after you shoot, before you share it.) It was unclear how this promising direction will change how we think about our life.

“What we see now is more emotional intensity,” she says. “When people are in more of a third person, they have less intense emotions, when they relive the experience, whereas if I stay in the first-person perspective, I feel genuine emotions that I experienced during the exchange.”

How to remember better

In the end, it’s just hard to know what the optimal balance of internal storage, and technologies for automated memory should be.

But if we want to hold on to certain memories, he’s going to take some mental effort.

This means paying closer attention to our surroundings. This means, using our cameras to consciously focus on the details, we really want to remember. This means putting down the camera for a few minutes to notice that the air seems to smell the streets, and to record our feelings about being there.

Smartphones can help in this process: they can store information and serve as memory cues to help us to get it later. But we can’t shift all of them.

One consistent finding from research on teaching is that the intentional committing of memory requires some effort. Reading the material not to help the student to learn the exam answers. No, it is hard work to dig in our memory and restore the data from scratch, making it easier to obtain later.

The same thing can happen with experience. “If we do not practice strategic, extraction effort, it may make it more difficult for us when we really have to rely on our own memories,” says Henkel.

Recently, I returned to the Grand Canyon for the second time. It was an unexpected trip. I didn’t bring a separate camera, and I don’t have many photographs with my iPhone. I already had the pictures. And it was liberating. Today, I remember the canyon squirrels were running around us, hoping to steal our lunch. I remember how soft the breeze of the Feb felt, encouraging 7 miles difficult hike. I remember a silly joke to my friend about how we should call the mule litter “trail apples” (they are quite round). It’s not photography, it’s in my head. And I’m sure they are correct.

Sourse: vox.com

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