Blog: Internet's Memory Effects Quantified in Computer Study

Internet's Memory Effects Quantified in Computer Study
BBC News (07/16/11) Jason Palmer

Recent experiments have shown that computers and the Internet are changing the nature of human memory, as people presented with difficult questions began to think of computers. If the participants knew that the facts would be available on a computer later, they had poor recall of the answers but enhanced recall of where they were stored, according to the study, which described the Internet as serving as a transactive memory. Transactive memory "is an idea that there are external memory sources--really storage places that exist in other people," says Columbia University's Betsy Sparrow. The researchers used a modified Stroop test to study how people thought about difficult questions and whether they relied on computers for the answers. The researchers provided a stream of facts to participants, and half were told to file them away on a computer, and the other half were told the facts would be erased. Those who knew the information would not be available later performed significantly better than those who filed the information away. However, those who expected the information to be available were very good at remembering in which folder they had stored it.

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