A new study led by UCL researchers found that using smartphones, smart watches, and other digital devices can improve a person’s memory skills.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, found that digital devices aid in the storage and recall of critical information. This, in turn, frees up their memory to recall less important information.
Neuroscientists have previously expressed concern that excessive use of technology could lead to cognitive decline and “digital dementia.”
The findings, however, show that using a digital device as an external memory not only helps people remember the information saved into the device, but it also helps them remember unsaved information.
Researchers created memory task
Researchers created a memory task that can be played on a touchscreen digital tablet or computer to demonstrate this. The test was carried out by 158 volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 71.
Participants were shown up to 12 numbered circles on the screen and were instructed to remember to drag some to the left and some to the right. At the end of the experiment, their pay was determined by the number of circles they remembered to drag to the correct side. One side was labelled ‘high value,’ which meant that remembering to drag a circle to that side was worth ten times as much as remembering to drag a circle to the other ‘low value’ side.
This task was completed 16 times by the participants. Half of the trials required them to remember using their own memory, while the other half allowed them to set reminders on the digital device.
Participants tended to use digital devices to save details of high-value circles
According to the findings, participants tended to use digital devices to save the details of the high-value circles. When they did this, their memory for those circles improved by 18%. Even in people who had never set any reminders for low-value circles, their memory for low-value circles improved by 27%.
However, the findings revealed a potential cost to using reminders. When the low-value circles were removed, the participants remembered them better than the high-value circles, indicating that they had entrusted the high-value circles to their devices and then forgotten about them.
Senior author, Dr Sam Gilbert (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) said: “We wanted to explore how storing information in a digital device could influence memory abilities.
“We found that when people were allowed to use an external memory, the device helped them to remember the information they had saved into it. This was hardly surprising, but we also found that the device improved people’s memory for unsaved information as well.
“This was because using the device shifted the way that people used their memory to store high-importance versus low-importance information. When people had to remember by themselves, they used their memory capacity to remember the most important information. But when they could use the device, they saved high-importance information into the device and used their own memory for less important information instead.
“The results show that external memory tools work. Far from causing ‘digital dementia’, using an external memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved. But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but lower-importance information in our own memory.”
The research was supported by an ESRC grant and a grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
