Google changes the way we remember information

7/15/2011 9:25:00 AM

According to a new study conducted by Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow, using Google is changing the way we access memory. In her study published in Science, college students were less likely to recall information when knowing they could easily retrieve it from computer sources such as Google or Wikipedia. In their studies, researchers showed that instead of remembering specific pieces of information, subjects were better at remembering how to find the requested information.

This study suggests that human memory has begun adapting to a new more-computer centric age in which the vast amounts of information available through the internet is being used as a source of “transactive” memory. Our reliance on computers and the internet is only going to grow in the future. Thus more study it will be interesting to follow our cognitive evolution as we continue to travel the informational highway.

For more information about this study, go to www.sciencemag.org