Soares and Storm investigated how taking a photo influences remembering what’s shown in that photograph. The researchers report that earlier studies have shown “A photo-taking-impairment effect…such that participants are less likely to remember objects they photograph than objects they only observe.” In their study, Soares and Storm determined that ”participants exhibited a significant photo-taking-impairment effect even though they did not expect to have access to the photos. In fact, the effect was just as large as when participants believed they would have access to the photos.”
So, whether study participants thought they would be able to look at photographs in the future or not be able to do so did not affect memories of objects photographed. In both cases taking the photographs degraded memories. Many professionals take photographs in the course of their work, and Soares and Storm’s findings suggest modifications in their work processes are in order. For example, when photographs are necessary, one person on a team may be designated as the group photographer and the other members may be “prohibited” from taking photos. It’s important to note that when people are wearing cameras that automatically take photographs, this memory effect is not found.
Julia Soares and Benjamin Storm. 2018. “Forget in a Flash: A Further Investigation of the Photo-Taking-Impairment Effect.” Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, vol. 7, o. 1, pp. 154-160, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.10.004
Sally Augustin, PhD,a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.