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Is technology

making my

memory worse?

S AN ostrich’s eye bigger than its brain? This
kind of trivia question was once a cognitive
I workout, but when was the last time you really
pondered a question, rather than simply turning
to the internet for help? Then there are phone
numbers and friends’ birthdays: information
we once stored in our brain is now held in the
smartphone in the palm of our hand.
Outsourcing memories, for instance to pad
and paper, is nothing new, but it has become
easier than ever to do so using external devices,
leading some to wonder whether our memories
are suffering as a result.
Probably the largest data dump is of snapshots
of events, whether it is thousands of photos
CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON/MAGNUM documenting our lives. You might think that
posted on social media or status updates

taking pictures and sharing stories helps you to
preserve memories of events, but the opposite is
true. When Diana Tamir at Princeton University
and her colleagues sent people out on tours,
those encouraged to take pictures actually had

Is my memory I know that I went out for recall in precise detail events from
decades ago. The best-known case is “ Creating a
dinner last month, but I can’t
that of a woman called Jill Price, who
remember anything about
normal? the experience can recall most days of her life from hard copy of
the age of 11. The majority of us fall
memories in
How much we remember of events we somewhere in between. Strong
have experienced seems to fall on a autobiographical memory skills are media leaves

Why do some people spectrum. At one extreme, some linked to the ability to form vivid
individuals are unable to form these
visual memories of experiences,
remember what they did kinds of memories at all. “People with and probably to a strong sense of a diminished
years ago, whereas others severely deficient autobiographical your own self-awareness. copy in our
memory syndrome would report an
have no clue, but never awareness of the fact they were at the Random memories pop

forget a face or are dinner, but they don’t have a feeling of spontaneously into my own heads”
masters of the trivia quiz? re-experiencing it. It’s more of a factual mind all the time
memory,” says neuropsychologist
Brian Levine of the Rotman Research Known as “mind pops”, these
Institute in Toronto. involuntary recalls happen to all of us,
At the opposite end of the spectrum on average about 20 times a day,
are those with “higher superior although there is a lot of variation
autobiographical memories”, who can between individuals. “It’s a basic

38 | NewScientist | 27 October 2018