Taking Pictures to Remember May Help You Forget

Taking Pictures to Remember May Help You Forget

　　There was a study done on museum goers, and the results were published recently. The study revealed that people that looked at pieces of art and sculptures were more likely to remember what they had seen than those who had just taken pictures of them. This means that taking a picture to help you remember something might end up having the opposite effect.

　　In our modern world, almost everything we do is shared on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Linda Henkel of Fairfield University in Connecticut was the author of the study. She believes that people whip out their cameras so often to mindlessly capture a moment that they actually miss out on what is really happening in front of their eyes.

　　Henkel's experiment was fairly simple. She had students go on a tour of the museum and take notes either by photographing them or observing them. The next day, the students were quizzed on these objects. The students that just observed the art fared much better than those who photographed it. Henkel now calls this the photo-taking impairment effect. "When people rely on technology to remember for them, counting on the camera to record the event and thus not needing to attend to it fully themselves, it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences," Henkel said.

　　The other thing that Henkel found was that pictures do actually help people remember things, but only if they observe and review them. The problem with this is that most people have an overabundance of pictures on their phones and do not really look at them frequently.

 

科技，让你忘记？

　　之前有一项针对参观博物馆的人所做的研究，而最近研究结果出炉了。该研究显示，用眼睛欣赏艺术品和雕刻品的人比那些只是用相机拍照的人更可能记住他们所看到的东西。也就是说，想用拍照来帮助你记住某些事情最终可能适得其反。

　　在现代社会中，几乎我们做的每件事都会在脸书、Instagram 或是推特上被分享。康乃狄克州费尔菲尔德大学的琳达‧亨克尔是上述研究的作者。她认为人们常常迅速拿出他们的相机、想也不想地去捕捉某个时刻，以致于实际上他们错过了真实发生在他们眼前的事。

　　亨克尔的实验相当简单。她要学生去参观博物馆，并用相机拍摄或是用眼睛观察来做笔记。隔天，她针对这些展览品对学生举行了小考。用眼睛观察艺术品的学生表现得比那些用相机拍照的学生要好得多。现在亨克尔把这种现象称为『拍照损伤效应』。亨克尔表示：『人们依赖科技来记下事物及依赖相机来记录事件的时候，他们就不需要全心专注于当下，因此可能对他们记住这些经验的程度有负面的影响。』

　　亨克尔还发现了另一件事情，那就是事实上照片的确会帮助人们记住事情，但前提是他们要观察及回顾。而问题是大多数人手机里的照片太多了，因此他们根本不会经常去观看。