Taking a cell phone photograph in a convenient way to store information for later retrieval. Many people take photos to remember their parking places and I have, on occasion, photographed the cover of a book in a library, so that I could order a copy later. But but does taking pictures affect a memory?
Yes, says a paper in the most recent Psychological Science. It seems to improve our visual memory for specific information, but degrades our audio memory. Here is the abstract:
How does volitional photo taking affect unaided memory for visual and auditory aspects of experiences? Across one field and three lab studies, we found that, even without revisiting any photos, participants who could freely take photographs during an experience recognized more of what they saw and less of what they heard, compared with those who could not take any photographs. Further, merely taking mental photos had similar effects on memory. These results provide support for the idea that photo taking induces a shift in attention toward visual aspects and away from auditory aspects of an experience. Additional findings were in line with this mechanism: Participants with a camera had better recognition of aspects of the scene that they photographed than of aspects they did not photograph. Furthermore, participants who used a camera during their experience recognized even nonphotographed aspects better than participants without a camera did. Meta-analyses including all reported studies support these findings.
