This earlier paper, by psychologist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University, found that people had a poorer recall for objects, and for the objects’ specific details, when they took photographs of them. The research was inspired by Henkel’s own experiences, recounting how we so easily and automatically take photographs of things rather than directly experience them in that moment.
In fact, for her experiment, she took students around an art gallery, a place infamous for constant snaps of the works of art. At the time, this was termed the photo-taking impairment effect, which we’ll helpfully abbreviate to PIE. It wasn’t clear why it was happening, but Henkel had a hypothesis. [...]
Of course, taking photographs helps us remember things in the long-term, but this impact on our short-term memory and our ability to remember nuances and details is nevertheless curious. PIE, however, was diminished if the photographs were zoomed in – suggesting perhaps the broader the scene, the poorer our recall may be. [...]
Speculating that the subjects are experiencing a sort of “metacognitive illusion”, they wonder if the act of carefully taking a photograph may erroneously convince our brains that we have already recorded the images, via both our camera and our own memories.
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