Alixandra Barasch

Who they are

The credit note comes first on this page because it changes how the work should be cited. Barasch, Diehl, Silverman and Zauberman state in their 2017 paper that all four contributed equally and that the authorship order is alphabetical. Alphabetical ordering is standard in some fields and uncommon in psychology, which is exactly why it is worth saying out loud: a reader who assumes the usual convention will read a first-author credit that the authors explicitly declined to claim. The right forms are to name all four, or to write "Barasch and colleagues" without implying lead authorship. The team's 2016 companion paper on enjoyment is not alphabetical, and Kristin Diehl is its first author.

What the four did was test a condition that Linda Henkel had named in print and left untested. Henkel's 2014 museum study instructed participants which objects to photograph and which merely to examine. Barasch and colleagues point out what that control removed: in order to decide what to photograph, a person has to search an experience for aspects worth capturing, and that search is itself an attentional process inherent to how people actually use cameras. So they let participants choose.

Their field study put 294 analysed participants on a real self-guided tour of an Etruscan exhibit with an audio guide, with the camera group keeping their own phones and no warning of a memory test. Visual recognition ran 66.51 per cent correct with a camera against 59.83 per cent without. Auditory recognition ran 75.34 against 77.93 and was not significant. Both groups took the same total time, and controlling for time changed nothing. Three laboratory studies using first-person video gallery tours followed, with samples of 298, 751 and 349, and two supplementary studies using an unnarrated London bus tour. Visual memory was better with a camera in every one. Auditory memory was significantly worse in three of them.

Pooled across all six studies, their meta-analysis reports a reliable positive effect on visual memory of d = 0.54, with a 95 per cent confidence interval of 0.45 to 0.63, and a smaller but reliable negative effect on auditory memory of d = 0.26, interval 0.16 to 0.36. Two controls make the result difficult to wave away. In the study modelled on the Google-effect paradigm, visual memory beat the no-camera condition whether participants were told their photographs would be saved or deleted, and the two camera conditions did not differ, which their own text says does not support the idea that people offload memory to photographs. In another study, taking merely mental photographs produced the same visual benefit, so the effect is not caused by operating a device. And memory for aspects the camera users never photographed was still d = 0.26 better than no-camera at all: holding a camera improved memory for things it was never pointed at.

They state their own limits, which should be printed as theirs. A short delay before testing, no revisiting of the photographs, and visual information that was naturally salient in all their contexts, which they say may have inflated the effect.

Key papers

Barasch is a working researcher whose output in this territory is journal articles rather than books, and this publication has verified no book of hers. The papers are listed instead.

Barasch, A., Diehl, K., Silverman, J., & Zauberman, G. (2017). "Photographic Memory: The Effects of Volitional Photo Taking on Memory for Visual and Auditory Aspects of an Experience." Psychological Science, 28(8), 1056-1066. doi:10.1177/0956797617694868. One field study, three laboratory studies and two supplementary studies, with an Open Data badge and data at osf.io/hrzgs. Funded by a Marketing Science Institute grant to Diehl and Zauberman. All four authors contributed equally and the order is alphabetical.

Diehl, K., Zauberman, G., & Barasch, A. (2016). "How taking photos increases enjoyment of experiences." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(2), 119-140. doi:10.1037/pspa0000055. Three field and six laboratory experiments on enjoyment, with engagement as the mechanism, and eye-tracking showing that volitional photo-taking directs fixations towards photo-worthy aspects. Diehl is first author of this one. This publication holds it at publisher-record level only.

Key ideas

Letting people choose what to photograph reverses the photo-impairment finding on the visual channel. Pooled across six studies, visual memory improves by about d = 0.54 and auditory memory worsens by about d = 0.26.

The deciding is the mechanism. Searching an experience for something worth capturing is an attentional act, and instructing participants what to photograph removes it.

Explicit offloading does not explain it. Visual memory improved whether participants expected their photographs to be kept or deleted, and taking mental photographs produced the same benefit.

Mediation reallocates rather than subtracts. Combined with the team's enjoyment finding and with Henkel's location-memory result, the honest summary is more of the visual, less of the auditory, more enjoyment, and less of the room you were standing in.

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