"photo-taking impairment effect"

[lynnb]

Link to media story. (There are many similar media reports all over the web).

Link to original Abstract.

Research by Linda A. Henkel at Fairfield University, CT "Point-and-Shoot Memories - The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour" suggests that taking pictures as an aid to memory actually results in less information being retained, except where participants take close ups of details of objects, which seems to negate the memory-loss effect.

I guess this means that finally I have an excuse for holding the family up while I take close-up snaps of details 🙂

excerpts from media report:
"...In the experiment a group of university students were led on museum tour and asked to either photograph or try to remember the objects on display.

...On the following day it was found that people were less accurate in recognising the objects they had photographed compared with those they had only looked at.

...Dr Henkel is investigating whether the content of a photograph - for example, whether you are in it - affects memory. She also wants to explore whether actively choosing what to photograph might influence what we remember."

Participants in this experiment had their memory tested one day after the museum tour, so this research doesn't seem to answer questions about long term memory. I'm certain that photographs are important triggers for memories once events are long past.

 

[lynnb]

On reflection I think the "drinking impairment effect" might be more statistically significant..

 

[daveleo]

This may depend on age.
I have a memory retrieval problem. Almost everything I have ever experienced (movies, pictures, music, stories) is still somewhere in my head but I can't find it until something triggers it's address. Like someone saying "That story about . . ." or "That scene where..." . . . . then it all comes back to me.
So I take pictures at museums and that triggers the experience over again when I get home and have forgotten it all !!

 

[jschrader]

perfectly plausible.

I guess, scientifically the issue is tricky because someone instructed to take photos may be more distracted from the object than someone taking photos out of interest.

But if you consider that people on holiday trips are also instructed to take photos of far-away cities for those left home, the situation is actually quite close to the study situation.

I always think what do those tourists in my little home-town center later remember ....

 

[shadowfox]

Oh my, so far I've been to museums and taking pictures.
Of course I remember where things are that I *like* especially if I also *photograph* it.

What does that have to do with my memory?

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Can't open the link.

In university it never helped me if I look or/and read only. I have to write it down to be able to remember it. Like manually writing the same with repeating of same drawings and schematics.
I don't know how it is called. Visual memory activation in writing?
It helped me a lot to stay in university, because most of the things they trough on us were useless or impossible to understand. 🙂

Same with pictures taken in research. P&S, mobile phone?
Sure they will forget, because whole exercise was useless.

But how could I or students in research could forget as easy as if no pictures taken if:
- pictures were uploaded to computer to review, deleting of bad ones, editing, naming, tagging and uploading/sharing good ones?

Also, I never take pictures of museums content. It is wierd to me, taking pictures of pictures.
It is hard to remember something useless, like taking pictures of pictures, I guess.
Want to remember the art, waste no time with P&S, buy the book and not only view, but read about it.... 🙂

 

[williams473]

Perhaps the key is in the different modes which people function in to learn and retain information. Instructional design theory teaches us that adult learners will usually only retain information they find useful.

But the camera adds another twist and makes this more interesting. A photographer (like many of us on this site) would likely find that our attention would be highly focused visually when taking pictures in the gallery, and that we would promote the subject matter (gallery objects) in significance. Thus our brain would decide what we are seeing is worth remembering whether we are truly interested or not. This being the case, we would probably remember quite well what we had seen in the museum, as long as we were taking pictures of those objects. Don't you usually replay in your mind scene after scene of highly detailed memory after having worked with the camera for a few hours - especially in a new locale?

Take the camera away and we would become more predictable - we may or may not fare well in recalling the objects. According to the theory I mentioned at the top here, if the subject matter we were seeing was of interest or use to us, perhaps we would remember it, or perhaps not. But the camera changes the experience and places real significance on the act of seeing, which becomes a mechanism for recall.

 

[rbiemer]

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I like the cartoon. It seems to me to be a lot closer to reality than the alleged research, as reported in the abstract.

I think I'll impair my memory a bit more this evening, with some Irish Dairy Liqueuer.

😀

 

[RichC]

The contemporary photography magazine "Introdex" has an article of mine and a project on memory and photography in its latest issue: http://www.introdexmagazine.com/insecta-essay-by-rich-cutler.html

 

[Paul Jenkin]

Doesn't it depend, to a significant extent, upon the purpose of the visit to whatever it is you're photographing? For example, my wife and went on a Nile cruise some years ago. Turns out we'd both been fascinated, as kids, with the ancient Egyptian civilisation and their monuments, temples and artefacts. As a child / student, I would have photographed and researched everything I'd seen. As a middle-aged adult, I was still in awe of what I saw butwas more interested in creating photographs from what I saw. Frankly, I surprised myself how little I was bothered about which Pharaoh built this or when.

As a teenager, I was fascinated by geography and geology. Whenever I could go yomping around the Lake District, Snowdonia and Scottish Hebrides, I would do so. I learned to love these places and return to them as regularly as I can - but purely to look and experuience the beauty of the sunrise / sunset and even the rain.

Sometimes things just need to be looked at and admired. We have a tendency to over-analyse and over-think these things.

 

[JoeV]

The contemporary photography magazine "Introdex" has an article of mine and a project on memory and photography in its latest issue: http://www.introdexmagazine.com/insecta-essay-by-rich-cutler.html

That was very well written, Rich. Thank you for sharing. I am especially intrigued by the implication that, for photography, all types of photos could be construed as "documentary" in nature, if they are assembled in the context of an archive; and that, as Sontag informs us, the archivist is rarely an unbiased observer, but maintains his collection to prop up some preconception, like the way museums represent the world view of their curators.

This reminds me that I've heard of studies that show memories to be easily maleable and often unreliable as unbiased records of fact, that our preception of the past is muddied by our present selves, with our biases, preferences and phobias.

Good stuff.

~Joe

 

[RichC]

That was very well written, Rich. ...
This reminds me that I've heard of studies that show memories to be easily maleable and often unreliable as unbiased records of fact, that our preception of the past is muddied by our present selves, with our biases, preferences and phobias.

Thanks Joe! I once told a photographer I like writing about photographs just as much as taking them, but got a peculiar look! 😀

You're right about memory. Memory doesn't work like a phonograph record, with it hardwired into the brain. Instead, each time we recall something it has to be remembered anew - which is why recurrent memories are less accurate and often more hazy than those that suddenly pop into our head for the first time since childhood. Recalling memories degrades them like Chinese whispers, a copy of a copy of a copy contaminated by the present...

Scientific experiments have been undertaken in which memories were changed beyond recognition, and the phenomenon is used in brainwashing and also more beneficially in therapy (e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/dec/09/memories-rewritten-anxiety-disorders).

So, if your partner recalls the time you both first met differently, it's not because they don't care but the opposite - they (or you!) care so much that the memory has literally been worn out!

 

[KoNickon]

I've seen a number of straightforward pictures of oft-photographed scenes, or even those not so often photographed, referred to (rather dismissively, I think), as "record shots." OK, well maybe a view of the Eiffel Tower is something that literally millions of people have taken, but it's THEIR picture -- they were there and they took it. That in and of itself means something the the person taking the picture, and seeing the picture later no doubt brings back good memories. Further, to the point made above, someone who takes care about making the shot in the right light, from a somewhat different angle so as to get a good background, etc., will remember the effort associated with the effect he/she was trying to get, and thus remember the occasion even better, I think.

But yes -- sometimes you do just want to soak it in, and not take pictures. That's why many people come back later, expressly for the purpose of taking pictures.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

That's why many people come back later, expressly for the purpose of taking pictures.

I'd be very interested in knowing how big a number "many" represents in this case.

In my opinion, unless this memory experiment is repeated in several countries with non-homogenous groups, all this shows is that a particular group of students reacted in a particular way for a given set of circumstances. I really don't see that it tells anyone anything that's worth remembering.

(with a camera or without). 😉