A new study says you may fall victim to memory problem, if you depends heavily on photograph to remember special moments in life later on, rather than devoting your soul and body to such events: depending heavily on photographs weakens memories.
It’s all about divided attention. according to Dr. Linda Henkel of Fairfield University in Connecticut:
When people rely on technology to remember for them — counting on the camera to record the event and thus not needing to attend to it fully themselves — it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences.
This finding is peculiar to students and researchers; relying on technology will adversely make them unable to remember things of the past without those technical aids.
If you really want to remember certain events later on in life, you don’t have to multitask i.e. taking photograph while studying the look. You either do the both at separate time. But, what if you are only limited to choose one?
In a research named “photo-taking impairment effect” conducted by Dr. Linda Henkel: Participants were divided into two groups and asked to tour a campus art museum at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The first group were instructed to only focus on the museum and try to remember what they saw, while the second were assigned to take photos.
On the following day meant for memory testing, those who only took photo experienced difficulties in recalling details about the museum unlike those who took proper time to study.
This study is not totally against the use of photograph for research. But only, when you adopt the ‘Point and Shoot’ option, rather than observing at first instance, then take photo which you could later save on your PC to process at your convenience.
Henkel hereby proved that: proliferation of images in the digital area has weakened the boost of memory. The researcher is now conducting experiments to see if photography effects memory differently based on the content of the photo. Like, what happens if the subject is in the photo and how much control the photographer has over what he photographs.