Taking Photos May Make Memories Harder to Recall

WASHINGTON: (News Desk) – Taking a photo or screenshot of something you want to remember may not always help your memory. A new study suggests that the act of photographing information could actually make it harder to recall details later.

Researchers associated with the Department of Psychology at Binghamton University in the United States found that people who photographed information were significantly less likely to remember specific details than those who simply observed it.

The researchers refer to the phenomenon as the “photo-taking impairment effect.” Their findings, published in the journal Memory and Cognition, suggest that saving an image on a smartphone does not automatically strengthen a person’s memory of the information captured.

Taking a photo may shift attention

Lead author Sofia Fabrizio, a doctoral student at Binghamton University, said people may be more likely to forget details when they take photographs but do not subsequently return to view them.

Smartphones now hold thousands of photographs for many users, with new images being added almost daily.

While looking back at photographs can help people reconstruct or refresh memories, simply taking a picture and leaving it stored in a phone’s camera roll may not offer the same benefit as actively paying attention to the original experience.

Seven experiments examine memory

To explore the effect, researchers conducted seven experiments in which participants viewed works of art and, in some cases, photographed them before later being tested on details they had seen.

Participants who took the photographs themselves were significantly less likely to remember certain information later, according to the findings.

Researchers also discovered an interesting distinction: the same memory impairment was not observed when images were automatically captured by body-worn cameras.

This finding led the researchers to suggest that the physical and mental processes involved in deliberately taking a photograph may contribute to the reduction in memory.

Photos can preserve information, but attention still matters

The findings do not mean photographs or screenshots are useless. Images can provide a valuable record that people can revisit when they need to check information or refresh their memories.

However, the study suggests that using a camera as a substitute for paying attention may come with a memory cost.

In other words, taking a picture may preserve the image itself while reducing how much information the brain actively processes and remembers from the original experience.