John wrote:
Interesting article in Motherboard.vice.com
"If you want to make a memory, start by forgetting your camera. Two new
studies published in Psychological Science found that people who took
pictures of objects had more trouble remembering specific details about
them, where they were situated, and even if they had seen them at all.
it seems valid given:
I read that all participants were asked to note and observe specific
objects.. with some asked to also record them photographically - and these
participants had worse recollections of the objects than the observers who
did not photograph them.
I also note that photographers who recorded incomplete parts of the object
had better recrecollection of the objects than those who recorded the whole
object.
This all ties in with my experience and reading - humans have many
evolutionary imperfections in thought processing and memory.
The first limitation that comes into play is that we humans do not have the
ability to cognitively 'muti-task', instead we switch rapidly between tasks
often doing both tasks less well.
Secondly, we suffer cognitive blindness during complex tasks, concentrating
and focusing reduces our ability to form integrated memories as we exclude
what we deem 'superfluous information' during these tasks - (and thus we
fail to place the object of our focus into the broad experience) - and the
memory becomed detatched. Our memory often discards detached memories.
It's an evolutionary trait that allowed us to discard memories of
irrelevant, repetitious and monotonous tasks.
Thirdly, while sight is our primary sense and one we place ahead of other
senses, it's weak, fallible and most corruptible when it comes to building
memories when compared to smell and hearing (touch is similarly awful).
'Sight' is a memory process as much as a 'seeing' one, with information
taken in being compared to known memories
Finally the people who did not simply record (the whole) but rather created
(by actively selecting part of the whole) did better as they became active
participants, musch as a student who rewrites their notes by paraphrasing
them into their own words generally does better than the student who simply
records and reads.
Our brains are inherently lazy and happy to allow us to farm out complex
tasks to what we perceive as being better technologies. Once farmed out, no
participation is deemed necessary (again and evolutionary trait - out of
sight, out of mind - or, the danger is no longer apparent .. time to relax)
of course we don't just have ONE brain inside our noggins, nor one
personality. Of course we think we do.. but that's just what they want us
to believe.. much as staff are happy to let the manager think he's running
the business.;)
My last few trips abroad I left the camera in the bag by choice which was
kinda hard to do, but I definitely have richer memories for it
karl
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