Internet's memory effects quantified in computer study

By Jason Palmer

Computers and the internet are changing the nature of our memory, research in the journal Science suggests.

Psychology experiments showed that people presented with difficult questions began to think of computers.

When participants knew that facts would be available on a computer later, they had poor recall of answers but enhanced recall of where they were stored.

The researchers say the internet acts as a "transactive memory" that we depend upon to remember for us.

Lead author Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University said that transactive memory "is an idea that there are external memory sources - really storage places that exist in other people".

"There are people who are experts in certain things and we allow them to be, [to] make them responsible for certain kinds of information," she explained to BBC News.

Co-author of the paper Daniel Wegner, now at Harvard University, first proposed the transactive memory concept in a book chapter titledCognitive Interdependence in Close Relationships, finding that long-term couples relied on each other to act as one another's memory banks.

"I really think the internet has become a form of this transactive memory, and I wanted to test it," said Dr Sparrow.

Where, not what

The first part of the team's research was to test whether subjects were "primed" to think about computers and the internet when presented with difficult questions. To do that, the team used what is known as a modified Stroop test.

The standard Stroop test measures how long it takes a participant to read a colour word when the word itself is a different colour - for example, the word "green" written in blue.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I don't think Google is making us stupid - we're just changing the way that we're remembering things…”

Dr Betsy SparrowColumbia University

Reaction times increase when, instead of colour words, participants are asked to read words about topics they may already be thinking about.

In this way the team showed that, after presenting subjects with tough true/false questions, reaction times to internet-related terms were markedly longer, suggesting that when participants did not know the answer, they were already considering the idea of obtaining it using a computer.

A more telling experiment provided a stream of facts to participants, with half told to file them away in a number of "folders" on a computer, and half told that the facts would be erased.

When asked to remember the facts, those who knew the information would not be available later performed significantly better than those who filed the information away.

But those who expected the information would be available were remarkably good at remembering in which folder they had stored the information.

"This suggests that for the things we can find online, we tend keep it online as far as memory is concerned - we keep it externally stored," Dr Sparrow said.

She explained that the propensity of participants to remember the location of the information, rather than the information itself, is a sign that people are not becoming less able to remember things, but simply organising vast amounts of available information in a more accessible way.

"I don't think Google is making us stupid - we're just changing the way that we're remembering things... If you can find stuff online even while you're walking down the street these days, then the skill to have, the thing to remember, is where to go to find the information. It's just like it would be with people - the skill to have is to remember who to go see about [particular topics]."

Google rewiring the way we remember, study says

by Leslie Katz

We've been told that social networking can make us depressed, envious, and filled with self-doubt, not to mention mess with our marriages.

Now, a new study out of Columbia University suggests another Internet-related side effect: All that Googling we're doing may be impacting our memory (which might not be a bad thing if it helps us forget all the scary things our online lives are supposedly doing to us).

The good news is our dependence on Internet searches isn't necessarily shrinking our cerebral cortexes or making us forget where we put our car keys. Instead, it's changing the way our brains organize and retain information, according to the study.

"Since the advent of search engines, we are reorganizing the way we remember things," Betsy Sparrow, a Columbia University assistant professor of psychology, said in a statement. "Our brains rely on the Internet for memory in much the same way they rely on the memory of a friend, family member, or co-worker."

In other words, the Internet has become a primary form of what psychologists call "transactive memory," or externally stored recollections that we know where to access when we need to.

The research, which comes out tomorrow in the journal Science, suggests we forget things we're sure we can find on the Internet, and are more likely to remember things we think we can't (probably very little these days). Furthermore, the research says, we are better able to remember where to find something on the Internet than we are at remembering the information itself.

Sparrow's paper, titled "Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips," is based on research conducted with colleagues Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard University. It involved four memory tests.

One experiment involved the participants reading trivia statements. They were then tested for their memory of them when they believed the statements had been saved (searchable later as is the case with Internet search and databases) or erased. Subjects who believed the information would be accessible did worse on the memory test than those who believed the information was gone.

The same trivia statements were used to test memory of both the information itself and where the information could be found. Participants again believed data information either would be saved in general, saved in a specific spot, or erased. They recognized the erased statements more than the ones that were saved.

Sparrow doesn't want her research to alarm people. She thinks a greater understanding of memory in the Google age could impact teaching and learning in beneficial ways.

"Perhaps those who teach in any context, be they college professors, doctors, or business leaders, will become increasingly focused on imparting greater understanding of ideas and ways of thinking, and less focused on memorization," Sparrow said. "And perhaps those who learn will become less occupied with facts and more engaged in larger questions of understanding."

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Columbia's department of psychology.