Hi I think many of the comments have it more correct than the article ... that is, they point out that humans have for a long-time depended on memory crutches (writing, wife to remember birthdays or where stuff is in the house, ...). I just do not understand why researchers want or need to dramatize their results. Consider the following from the article.
"A second experiment was aimed at determining whether computer accessibility affects precisely what we remember. *If asked the question whether there are any countries with only one color in their flag, for example,* the researchers wrote, *do we think about flags * or immediately think to go online to find out?* In this case, participants were asked to remember both the trivia statement itself and which of five computer folders it was saved in. The researchers were surprised to find that people seemed better able to recall the folder. *That kind of blew my mind,* Dr. Sparrow said in an interview." I don't have access to the full article, so don't know how large the difference referred to as "better" was, but should it really be characterized as "surprising" and "blowing my mind" no matter how large? Perhaps a better title here would have been "Are sensationalistic reports about the brain, the internet, whatever making people stupid." Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax [email protected] >>> "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> 15-Jul-11 3:43 PM >>> Consider: If you have immediate access to information (or the belief that you have immediate access to information), would you bother to engage in memory encoding of new information that would produce a durable memory trace/representation of that information? The answer appears to be "No". The New York Times and other outlets are reporting on a new study by Sparrow, Liu and Wegner that was just printed in Science. The NY Times article can be accessed here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/health/15memory.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26 Here is a blog on the PC World website that covers the story: http://www.pcworld.com/article/235757/google_is_changing_the_way_you_think_say_researchers.html One can access the Science magazine article here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/07/13/science.1207745#aff-2 Betsy Sparrow of Columbia U. and Daniel Wegner have been doing research along these lines, using Wegner's construct of "Transactive Memory", that is, memories can be thought of as being distributed member of a group or a community and if specific members retain certain types of information (e.g., the history of the group), then others don't have to learn that information because of their access to those persons (however, if no one learns what those people know, then that knowledge will be lost, that is, lack of redundancy can result in loss of knowledge as well as confounding biases of the rememberer with the information). Of course, the problems associated with such "offline memory" are nothing new. I believe one argument against the use of books was that relying upon books was a sign of a lazy mind, that one was following a principle of least effort instead of "active learning" of material and forming durable knowledge structures. The only question I have about this alleged reliance on offline info is: What are you going to do when the Zombie Apocalypse (tm) comes, the internet and electricity gets shut down, and you'll be busy running from the undead who think that you'd make an excellent snack? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a891720c9&n=T&l=tips&o=11455 or send a blank email to leave-11455-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=11456 or send a blank email to leave-11456-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
