Your Brain and Memory are Adapting to Google, Study Says

[mooeypoo]

Must... stop.... googling....

 

 

It has become a part of everyday vernacular to say, "Oh, just Google it," in order to find information not readily known. Because Google has seemingly become a part of everyday life, a new study indicates that it is altering our brains.

 

Or, to put it more precisely, Google -- and therefore, the Internet - is changing the way our brains choose to remember.

 

In an amnesia dubbed "The Google Effect," by a team led by psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University, it is said that we are less likely to remember information, when we know where to find it instead.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/180544/20110714/google-brain-memory-study-change-forgot.htm

[thinker_jeff]

To establish an explict memory, it usually needs help by some kind of motivation. This reseach supports my thought.

Such is similar thing happened again and again. For example, the electronic calculators extended users' math power but reduced their math capability in their brains.

Edited July 15, 2011 by thinker_jeff

[TonyMcC]

There is probably a lot of truth in this. It is well known that if a lecturer wants to get over an important piece of information he/she will have to reinforce the process by finding ways of presenting it a number of times. The means to do this include verbal questions during the lecture, homework which makes the student think over the points made and practical experiments. To just quote the facts once will not be very productive. It therefore seems reasonable that wanting a quick answer to an immediate problem that,being solved, then goes away may not add much to your knowledge.

Edited July 15, 2011 by TonyMcC

[Athena]

Must... stop.... googling....

 

 

http://www.ibtimes.c...ange-forgot.htm

 

Einstein said something like, "don't bother to remember what you can look up". There are zillions of things for us to know, and it is a wise person who is aware of how much s/he does not know. This forum is pretty limited to science, and I don't think anyone here is an expert on all the different fields of science? There are other forums for history and politics. We have to be selective in fields of interest, and will learn one or two fields very well. For the rest, depending on google is an excellent way to deal with our desire to know everything and the limits of our brains. Einstein was highly respected for his specialty, and he did not attempt to hold all information about everything in his head. Let us not worry needlessly over google and our brain function.

[thinker_jeff]

Einstein said something like, "don't bother to remember what you can look up". There are zillions of things for us to know, and it is a wise person who is aware of how much s/he does not know. This forum is pretty limited to science, and I don't think anyone here is an expert on all the different fields of science? There are other forums for history and politics. We have to be selective in fields of interest, and will learn one or two fields very well. For the rest, depending on google is an excellent way to deal with our desire to know everything and the limits of our brains. Einstein was highly respected for his specialty, and he did not attempt to hold all information about everything in his head. Let us not worry needlessly over google and our brain function.

There are very few professions like what Einstein was doing and very few brains like what Einstein had. In reality, the most of the jobs require a lot of memories. For example, if you are a medical doctor you definitely need a great deal of memories to treat patients correctly.

[imatfaal]

And whilst it might not be neccessary to remember the exact values for the speed of light and planck's constant - if you have to use google to ascertain that one is very big and the other very small then you are in trouble

[wanabe]

It's important to note that it's how we use Google that changes our brains, just using Google alone does not change your brain, its how one chooses to employ it. People can choose to read the sites they search with Google, as they would read a text book. Bottom line: we remember things that stir emotion & things that were interested in, and of course we can utilize memorization techniques to reduce dependency on external sources of information. Ironically, they can be searched for and found using Google.

Edited July 20, 2011 by wanabe

[jimmydasaint]

I don't know if I am alone in this belief, but I have seen rote memory used to recall answers for University examinations, and it works! Rote memory is not 'applied' learning but it is superb for essay-based examinations where students can memorise and then trot out a list of facts which make their essays robotic but with a very high factual content.

 

IIRC, pre-medieval and medieval people had memories for facts which would be considered amazing today. We should also not ignore a rich history of the spoken word and story telling as a learning tool, it is a superb way of learning facts and lists.

 

In short, reliance on external sources for information rather than the brain is not a dumbing down process but rather reflects neural plasticity, in my opinion, and is not surprising given the enormous amount of information we are exposed to on a day-to-day basis.