Study: Taking a photo of something impairs your memory of it

"Around 50 undergraduates viewed paintings one at a time onscreen. In one block, participants took a photo of each painting with a smartphone, and then had 15 seconds to look at the painting itself. In a second experimental block, the participants took a photo of each painting, deleted the photo immediately (so they knew it could never been accessed in the future), then had 15 seconds to look at the painting. Finally, in another experimental block, they took no photos and simply viewed each painting for 15 seconds."

After a ten minute delay (during which phones were confiscated) came a multiple- choice memory test probing what the participants remembered about the various paintings. Compared to paintings that were simply viewed, performance was poorer for paintings that were photographed. Critically, this was true both for the condition where the photo was stored, and for the condition where it was deleted, meaning the participant knew they could not rely on it as a future memory partner.

This suggests that offloading may not be the cause of the memory disadvantage associated with taking photos. One alternative explanation is that using a camera forces us to disengage from properly taking in the stimulus, as our attention flows to the mechanics of operating buttons, checking brightness, exposure etc. This is something commonly reported by people as part of their photo-taking experience, and also tallies with the fact that automatic wearable cameras that store images for later don’t produce the memory impairment. However, in the current experiment, after taking pictures (or not), every participant had the same amount of time to take in the paintings without use of equipment, so any distraction effect would need to include some sort of delayed effect on memory processing even after the act of taking a photo was over.

Soares and Storm have a speculative second interpretation....

"it was nearly identical from time to time to time—and the system worked from rat to rat to rat”

"Inside the Memory Machine"

Based on the activity they observed, they could even tell when the rats were going to make an error. “The rats are not making mistakes randomly. They’re responding the way they are because the hippocampus encoded the wrong information,” he adds.

Humans make similar errors when they try to look for their parked cars, Deadwyler says. Imagine if yesterday, you parked your car in the second row near the door, but today, you parked in the fourth row near the back. But today you were also preoccupied by a 9 a.m. meeting, and so you weren’t paying close attention to where you parked. If you tried to find your car in the second row of the lot, you would be making the same mistake as the rats because your hippocampus didn’t encode this morning’s parking spot very well.

rat hippocampus

"Take the Brad Pitt Movie-Hair Quiz"

Over his [Brad Pit] 25-year career, he's mixed up his hairdos in ways big and small, both on his face and scalp. Take the Brad Pitt Hair Quiz and find out how well you remember all of his movie dos. You'll see just the hair and have to guess the movie. Luckily, right or wrong, you'll get to see that handsome mug of his. Good luck!

 

 

Volture

A Leg Of Lamb

Gigot d'agneau rôti à la Palladian

'Tis wond'rous strange, that I should be compelled to cook a leg of lamb, at this moment in my life. I lost a lot, a lot has gone wrong for me, with me, and through it all I have done my best to survive. In need of somewhere to sleep during the summer of 2013, I decided that it was only fair that I offer something, or some service, to sheltering friends in return for their kindness (and tolerance). So I decided to cook for my keep.

For these sheltering friends I have cooked meals great and small, familiar and revelatory. Often my cooking depends upon what I can find on offer at the supermarkets in small towns. Recently I decided to cook a special dinner, a feast of gratitude for my hosts, so I went to the local supermarket and searched for inspiration in the meat section. There were a lot of beasts and cuts of beasts available, but none seemed special enough to express my appreciation for my friends' hospitality. There were chickens, a bit too ordinary. Some frozen quail, but not enough. There were some thin, greying steaks with ridiculous prices, and some forlorn frozen turkeys with torn wrappings.

And then I saw, next to the overpriced organic beef and "Hundred Calorie" steaks (which looked to be rounds of beaten beef about the size of a large slice of pepperoni and half as appetizing), a leg of lamb. Lamb, in the small town where I was staying, is an unusual meat so stores usually carry little of it. I suspect that much of it reaches its "Sell By" date unsold. This was such a piece of lamb, its price reduced: 50% off. A very good buy, and not a bad leg at all, shrink-wrapped as it was, and from Australia. So I bought it. My feast of gratitude would feature lamb. A late-summer, shrink-wrapped, special-offer leg of lamb, from the other side of the earth to this rural American supermarket.