{"id":2731,"date":"2017-04-17T13:54:56","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T17:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=2731"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:01:36","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:01:36","slug":"youll-still-probably-have-to-google-what-the-google-effect-is-later-on-even-if-you-read-this-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2017\/04\/17\/youll-still-probably-have-to-google-what-the-google-effect-is-later-on-even-if-you-read-this-now\/","title":{"rendered":"You’ll still probably have to Google what the Google effect is later on, even if you read this now"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

http:\/\/www.medicaldaily.com\/smartphones-tablets-and-tvs-all-screen-time-hurting-your-mind-and-body-335808<\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine you encounter a time traveler who recently arrived in the present day from a couple hundred years ago. What would he or she be most impressed by in this day and age? Would it be the skyscrapers and developed roadways? The drastic decrease in the amount of untouched nature? The amount of leisure time and luxuries people have today compared to back then? No; perhaps the most amazing breakthrough that distinguishes today from a few centuries ago, though it is seemingly taken for granted by most who use it, is the phenomenon of us having almost all the information we could possibly need contained in a small box in our pockets. The ability to search the plethora of knowledge that is the internet at any time and any place allows us to access any information we want within seconds. Gone are the archaic days in which we needed to flip through countless books looking for a single quote or memorize facts that may or may not be useful in the future. So, why would we bother taking up space in our memory with such knowledge when we could simply remember where to find it?<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, our brains have already figured this shortcut out for themselves. The Google effect, a term first coined in a paper by Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner (2011), is the tendency for someone to remember where to find certain information better than the material itself. The paper (which can be found here<\/a>) discussed several experiments that were carried out, the results of which all converged onto this central concept of people becoming increasingly reliant on web searches for knowledge. One trial suggested that when people believe they’ll have access to information later on, they will\u00a0not remember it as well as information they think will\u00a0not be available to search. Another experiment had participants type short trivia facts into a computer, and were told afterward that each entry was either saved or deleted. When quizzed about the trivia facts later on, the participants could more accurately remember the facts they were told had been erased than those they were told had been saved on the computer; however, they could better recognize whether a certain trivia fact had been saved than if it had been deleted. Additionally, they were able to correctly say more often than not exactly where the saved information had been kept. In short, people are better at remembering things they don\u2019t believe they\u2019ll be able to find later on, but have good memory of where to find things they know they have access to.<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-35399604<\/p><\/div>\n

Why do might our brains do this? \u00a0Some interpret the Google effect as the brain\u2019s way of adapting to the doors technology has opened for humans (Dong & Potneza 2015); it is your mind\u2019s way of taking a shortcut and using less effort than it would if it tried to store everything it came across on the internet. As long as you are able to figure out where exactly to look for facts online, there is virtually no limit to what you can \u201cknow\u201d at any given time. If you are aware that statistics for your favorite baseball team\u2019s offensive performance will be right in your pocket while sitting at a game, you won\u2019t need to worry yourself with memorizing the whole roster\u2019s batting averages before getting to the game (unless you want to impress other fans by rattling off team trivia in the bleachers).<\/p>\n

In a way, the Google effect is like using computers as external memory drives. This concept goes along with the idea of humans\u2019 transactive memory systems<\/em>: when people work in a group, they tend to divide up the information at hand between group members and are able to remember who has what knowledge. The entire group’s\u00a0combined knowledge\u00a0is more than any single person could hope to remember (Austin 2003). This is why, as much as college students may hate them, group projects are implemented in class and typically involve more work than individual projects (more information about transactive memory can be found here<\/a>). The Google effect basically involves a transactive memory system on an extremely large scale, connecting the knowledge of everyone on Earth. If you think about it this way, it might seem like it\u2019s a good thing our brains have adapted to technology.<\/p>\n

That may not be the case. A study done by Dong and Potneza (2015) suggests that, in terms of overall learning, searching for information in encyclopedias gives people a better memory of that information than searching for it using a web browser.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

http:\/\/forums.sherdog.com\/threads\/lets-talk-about-the-encyclopedia.3247581\/<\/p><\/div>\n

Although participants using the internet were able to find and recite information more quickly than participants using encyclopedias, the encyclopedia group had better scores when tested on the material later on. So, even though both groups used sources other than their own memories, there was a significant difference in their retained knowledge. This could be explained by deep processing versus shallow processing<\/em> of information: the more attention that is paid to the meaning of given information, the better it will be remembered. Since looking something up in an encyclopedia takes more time and effort (deep processing) than looking something up online (shallow processing), it is more likely to be remembered. Even if using an encyclopedia is better for our memory, we won\u2019t be making the switch back to books any time soon; this same study also included brain scans of the participants using computers, and showed that looking up information online triggered neural activity in some of the same regions as when people take drugs. We have conditioned ourselves to use computers to find information we don\u2019t know, and are mentally rewarded when we open a web browser.<\/p>\n

Another curious way the Google effect has affected the daily lives of college students is in the makeup of research papers. A study done at MIT showed that the number of citations used in doctoral theses has steadily increased over time, despite the expectations and requirements for the projects have stayed about the same (Varshney 2012). This suggests that doctoral students nowadays have less general information that they just know offhand about their topic than students in previous decades. Instead, they know where they would need to search in order to find that information, and are thus obligated to cite these sources in their final projects. While this may not be inherently good or bad, the Google effect might help you get to that minimum page count for your next essay.<\/p>\n

The Google effect may only become more common as people get more and more attached to their phones and look for that instant gratification of being able to know something within seconds without much effort. This is not necessarily a bad thing, aside from the fact that the trivia games you play with your family might get more boring. However, some might be bothered by the fact that unlimited access to any information they want is altering the way they think and remember material. So, the next time you\u2019re studying for a test, you may want to use a textbook instead of the slides your teacher posted online. Better yet, try to recall the material by yourself without the help of an external source, since you won\u2019t be able to cite a Wikipedia page<\/a> on an exam.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

Austin, J.R. (October 2003). Transactive memory in organizational groups: The effects of content, consensus, specialization, and accuracy on group performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88<\/em>(5): 866-878. DOI: 10.1037\/0021-9010.88.5.866<\/p>\n

Dong, G., Potenza, M. N. (October 2015). Behavioural and brain responses related to Internet search and memory. European Journal of Neuroscience, 42<\/em>(8):\u00a02546\u20132554. doi:\u00a010.1111\/ejn.13039<\/p>\n

Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D.M. (5 August 2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333<\/em>(6043):<\/em> 776-778. DOI: 10.1126\/science.1207745<\/p>\n

Varshney, L.R. (September 2012). The Google effect in doctoral theses. Scientometrics, 92<\/em>(3): 785-793. DOI: 10.1007\/s11192-012-0654-4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine you encounter a time traveler who recently arrived in the present day from a couple hundred years ago. What would he or she be most impressed by in this day and age? Would it be the skyscrapers and developed roadways? The drastic decrease in the amount of untouched nature? The amount of leisure time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7948,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60348,80215],"tags":[266323],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2731"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2944,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions\/2944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}