YSM Issue 86.3

FEATURE
NEUROSCIENCE
Is Google Ruining Your Memory?
The Science of Memory in the Digital Age
BY JARED MILFRED
Is France larger or smaller than Transalpine Gaul? What is the
source of the Danube River? Where, geographically, is Mount Blanc?
These questions, straight from an 1869 Ivy League entrance exam,
are strikingly different from those of the SAT. Today, no collegereadiness
test would ask this kind of question. It seems frivolous to
ask students to think back to geography class and try to remember
whether their teachers ever mentioned the answers. If a 21 st -century
student ever needed to know, his or her reaction would be automatic
— just Google it.
Science can explain why we have grown increasingly reliant on
Internet search engines like Google. Groundbreaking psychology
research is giving us insight into how modern technology affects our
memories. It seems that pervasive
access to information has not only
changed what we remember; it has
changed how we remember. At
least that’s what Dr. Betsy Sparrow,
Assistant Professor of Psychology
at Columbia University, believes.
In a recent study published in
Science, Sparrow and her colleagues
performed four experiments that
demonstrate how our brains have
adapted to technology. In one
experiment, researchers tested how
well subjects remember information
that they expect to have later
access to, as people might with
information they know they could
easily look up online. Subjects were
given 40 pieces of interesting trivia:
Some were completely new facts like, “An ostrich’s eye is bigger than
its brain,” and others were facts that subjects may have known generally,
but not in detail — for example, “The space shuttle Columbia
disintegrated during re-entry over Texas in Feb. 2003.” Each subject
then typed the facts into a computer. Half the participants were told
that the computer would save what was typed. The other half believed
the entries would be erased.
After the reading and typing phases, all participants were asked to
write down as many of the statements as they could remember. Subjects
were substantially more likely to remember information if they
believed they would not be able to find it later. The implications are
far-reaching. For example, if a professor posts lecture slides on the
Internet, students may be less apt to remember information because
they know that they can look up the information later if the need arises.
Next, the researchers attempted to determine whether the Internet
has become, in some sense, an external memory system for those who
use it. This phenomenon is called transactive memory and has been
known to happen in long-term relationships, group work environments,
and other situations where people rely on others to remember
information for them. While we like to imagine the human memory as
having unlimited storage capacity, in truth, we have evolved to offload
By providing ubiquitous access to information, Google is changing
not only what we remember — it is changing how we remember.
information onto other people, like family and coworkers, as well as
other mediums, like handwritten notes and books. Sparrow wanted to
know whether we employ the Internet in the same way.
“If asked the question whether there are any countries with only
one color in their flag,” Sparrow wrote, “do we think about flags — or
immediately think to go online to find out?”
The results were surprising: researchers found that subjects paid
more attention to computer and Internet-related words when faced
with difficult trivia, suggesting that our brains are primed to think
about computers when we encounter questions that we do not know
the answer to.
Sparrow’s two other experiments yielded interesting results as well.
In one, Sparrow found that when
we learn facts under the impression
that we will not be able to
easily look them up in the future,
we become better at spotting
differences between those facts
and similar ones we are shown at
a later time. In the other, when
the researchers asked subjects to
remember a trivia fact and which
of five computer folders it was
saved in, Sparrow was astonished
to find that people were significantly
better at recalling the folder
than the fact itself. “That kind
IMAGE COURTESY OF MINDTECH SWEDEN
of blew my mind,” she said in an
interview with the New York Times.
These results suggest that our
memory patterns have indeed
changed, but the Internet itself is not the sole culprit. Smartphones
and tablets, too, have tremendously increased the ease and speed
with which we can access information. And wearable computing is
just around the corner—Google has invested millions of dollars in
developing glasses with an integrated transparent digital display that
augments reality by providing continuous information overlain onto
what the user sees. If devices like these ever become as ubiquitous as
smartphones, our society could be profoundly altered. College examinations
today commonly test for knowledge comprehension. Perhaps
one day, such tests will be as outdated to our future counterparts as
geography on an Ivy League admissions test is to us.
Sparrow’s work raises broader questions, too. Pervasive access to
information is clearly making society better in some ways. Many argue
that it leads to a more educated populace, more capable scientists, and
better informed political decisions. But at some point, society should
question itself. In adopting the mentality of constant information at
our fingertips, are we leaving something important behind? When we
reduce how much information we hold in our brains, do we diminish
the potential for subconscious reasoning and human insight? Answers
to these important questions remain elusive, but more work like Sparrow’s
will hopefully lead us in the right direction.
30 Yale Scientific Magazine | April 2013 www.yalescientific.org