Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
Sparrow, Liu and Wegner ran four experiments on what happens to memory when information is always retrievable. Two findings came out of them. First, when people were asked difficult factual questions, thoughts of computers were activated, as though the impulse to look something up arrives before the attempt to remember it. Second, and more consequentially, when people expected to have access to information later, they remembered less of the information itself and more about where to find it. The authors describe this as the internet becoming a form of transactive memory, the arrangement by which people have always offloaded knowledge onto others, a colleague who knows the accounts, a partner who remembers the birthdays, except that the partner is now a search engine. The study is very widely cited. One caution belongs on this page: the first of its findings, the automatic activation of computer-related thoughts, has failed to replicate in later attempts, while the shift towards remembering locations rather than content has held up better.
Sparrow, Liu and Wegner ran four experiments on what happens to memory when information is always retrievable. Two findings came out of them. First, when people were asked difficult factual questions, thoughts of computers were activated, as though the impulse to look something up arrives before the attempt to remember it. Second, and more consequentially, when people expected to have access to information later, they remembered less of the information itself and more about where to find it. The authors describe this as the internet becoming a form of transactive memory, the arrangement by which people have always offloaded knowledge onto others, a colleague who knows the accounts, a partner who remembers the birthdays, except that the partner is now a search engine. The study is very widely cited. One caution belongs on this page: the first of its findings, the automatic activation of computer-related thoughts, has failed to replicate in later attempts, while the shift towards remembering locations rather than content has held up better.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Sparrow, B., Liu, J. & Wegner, D. M. (2011). “Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips.” Science, 333(6043), 776-778.
Where we use it
- Both Sides of the Screen-Time Argument, Why We Look
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745
DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745