Taking a lot of photos, for example, on a trip would prevent the memories from imprinting in our memory.
What if amassing hundreds or even thousands of souvenir snapshots during a sightseeing excursion or a family celebration actually had the opposite effect from what you were looking for? According to an American study, the fact of tirelessly strafing the places that we absolutely want to remember, would paradoxically make us lose our memory.
Taking souvenir photos makes it easier to forget
This study published in the journal Psychological Science is indeed interested in the impact of the use of the camera on the memory of visitors to a museum. To carry out their experiment, Linda Henkel and her team at Fairfield University thus asked students to observe a few objects, either by taking a picture of them or simply by looking at them attentively. The day after the visit, these researchers carried out tests to assess the students’ memory. In the end, those who had just observed the objects had better memories of the objects compared to “photographers”. Those who had been assigned to take souvenir photos ended up having more difficulty remembering certain details. “People pull out their cameras so quickly, almost without thinking, to capture a moment, that it’s at a point where they even forget what’s going on right in front of them,” says Linda Henkel.
Store and study your photos to keep them in memory
In a second test, the authors of this study evaluated the memory of students who took snapshots using the zoom on a detail of an object. As a result, these volunteers seemed to remember the object in question as a whole better, rather than the detail they had focused on.
“These results show how different the eye of the mind and the eye of the device are,” says the author. According to her, these results confirm those obtained in other previous studies, showing that taking pictures helps to remember an event or a place, but only if the photographer later takes time for them. sort and study them. In conclusion, the authors of this analysis explain that to keep memories in mind, when you amass many digital clicks as is often the case today, it is absolutely necessary to organize them carefully and take the time. to observe them carefully.
.
