{"id":2975,"date":"2017-04-17T15:29:37","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T19:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=2975"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:40:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:40:07","slug":"google-how-its-changing-the-way-we-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2017\/04\/17\/google-how-its-changing-the-way-we-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"Google- How It’s Changing the Way We Remember"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many times have you found yourself googling a question that you know you\u2019ve heard the answer to before, but you just couldn\u2019t remember it? Or have you ever wondered why you just couldn\u2019t recall a small factoid that you read about in a news article the other day? Probably quite often, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, the internet may be to blame. A new phenomenon associated with our ability to remember things that we believe to be easily accessible through a quick internet search has emerged and has been coined the \u201cgoogle effect\u201d based on the popular search engine. The internet can be thought of as a memory storage system outside of our own brain- like how a USB drive is an external memory storage device.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cognitive Resources and Memory<\/b><\/p>\n

Everyone has a limited amount of cognitive resources; everyone has the ability to focus on only a few things at once. Because of this, we subconsciously pick and choose what to devote our attention to and what tasks require the most effort. With the introduction of the internet, we are more likely to believe that the information will be available to us at anytime, so we are less likely to focus our attention on attempting to commit the information to memory (Huebner, 2013). This means that the information will be attended to- recognized and acknowledged- but not encoded- converted into a mental representation that can be retrieved quickly at a later time. <\/span><\/p>\n

In order for a memory to be remembered, a series of steps need to occur. First, the item must be given attention. You must not only see or hear the item, but you must also recognize it as an item that should be remembered. After attention is given the item, you have to then encode and store it in memory. This means that you recognize any patterns in the item and store the memory as those patterns.<\/span><\/p>\n

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For example, let\u2019s say you just read a long article about pine trees. Instead of storing each individual fact, your mental representation of the information may look more like a concept map or a collage of information that you deem the most important. Finally, you will need to engage in retrieval.\u00a0<\/span>Memory retrieval is when you do a mental search through everything you remembered about the pine trees, but you only pull out the fact that pine cones can have a gender.\u00a0<\/span>Memory is often evaluated based on an individual\u2019s ability to retrieve information.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Encoding and Retrieval<\/b><\/p>\n

Because of the availability of internet search engines where seemingly infinite amounts of information is stored, many things that we once deemed necessary to be encoded- like the fact about pine cones above- no longer are because the information is now accessible from an outside source. We save our cognitive resources by not focusing on encoding this information, especially if we first encounter the information online (Dong & Potenza, 2015). Internet searches mimic how we search our own mental representations, however they tend to be faster and less controlled. Internet searches can, using psychological terminology, be described as automatic processes. That is, they can occur without much conscious thought, occur quickly, and are virtually effortless. Because of this, information found through an internet search typically is not stored in long-term memory (Dong & Potenza, 2015). Searches for information conducted using a medium other than the internet, such as reading a book, require greater effort and a greater amount of cognitive resources, but the information is more likely to be attended to and encoded in such\u00a0<\/span>a way that retrieval will be easier in the long term.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Another interesting aspect of the google effect is its similarities to the way groupthink- the practice of thinking and making decisions as a group- and transactive memory- the way in which groups encode, store, and retrieve information- work in everyday life (Sparrow, Liu & Wegner, 2011). If you would like to read the original paper, click here<\/a>. In a way, the internet is a giant shared memory between all people with access to it. In theory, everyone has the ability to search for and find the same information and then all share a really similar memory (Austin, 2003). Also, if someone assumes they could just ask someone for the information later, they are less likely to encode and store the information themselves; this can be described as an old-fashioned version of the google effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of an individual’s first instinct being to think and search their memory for information, it is now to look it up online. The more exposure someone has to technology, the more pronounced this effect is and the more likely it is to interfere with daily life. For example, a student taking a dendrology (yes, I did have to look that up again; this is a real-time example of the google effect) course and learning about pine cones would find it more difficult to remember the details from the article they skimmed on their phone about pine trees a few weeks ago. The context in which they read the article led for their mind to subconsciously deem the information as \u201cnot too important\u201d and consider it easily accessible through means other than encoding, storage, and retrieval. This then led to the information not being encoded then, and because the student is now taking a course that requires the information, they will have to actively engage in the encoding process which requires a lot of cognitive resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Prevention and Conclusion<\/b>
\nSo, the next time you have the thoughts \u201cI\u2019ll just google it\u201d or \u201cI\u2019ll look it up again later if I need to\u201d, try to remember reading this blog- though you may find it more difficult to as a result of the google effect. You may have already experienced the google effect in the past, but you can reduce the possibility of experiencing it again in the future by focusing on what you read and listen to, being consciously aware of your surroundings, and actively rehearsing and repeating information rather than assuming you will be able to access it through an internet search when you need it later. If you would like to read more about the google effect, please click here<\/a>.<\/span><\/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. (2015). Behavioural and Brain Responses related to Internet search and memory. <\/span>European Journal of Neuroscience,<\/span><\/i> 42<\/span><\/i>(8), 2546-2554. doi:10.1111\/ejn.13039<\/span><\/p>\n

Huebner, B. (2013). Socially Embedded Cognition. <\/span>Cognitive Systems Research,<\/span><\/i> 25-26<\/span><\/i>, 13-18. doi:10.1016\/j.cogsys.2013.03.006<\/span><\/p>\n

Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. <\/span>Science,<\/span><\/i> 333<\/span><\/i>(6043), 776-778. doi:10.1126\/science.1207745<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many times have you found yourself googling a question that you know you\u2019ve heard the answer to before, but you just couldn\u2019t remember it? Or have you ever wondered why you just couldn\u2019t recall a small factoid that you read about in a news article the other day? Probably quite often, right? Well, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,266316,80215],"tags":[130382,266323],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975"}],"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\/8161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2975"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3681,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions\/3681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}