Adrian Word has been driving Austin, Texas with confidence in nine years -last November has begun to get lost. The Ward phone is working, and Apple Maps has no longer functioning. Suddenly, Ward could not even find a good friend’s way to the house, and made him aware of how much he had rely on technology in the past. “I instinctively put a map and do what I say,” he says.
Word experience reflects general complaints. The Internet is impaired our memory. This fear has been shown in several surveys over the past few years, and because one software company knows that digital devices are preserved instead, “digital digital. I derived the term “amnesia”. Last year, the Oxford University Publishing Bureau announced that the words of that year were “brain rot.”
“What you see is all kinds of miserable predictions about digital amnesia.” I don’t use it anymore, so I’m going to lose my memory, “says Daniel Section, who is studying memory at Harvard University in Cambridge. 。 , Massachusetts.
The hallucinations of AI cannot be stopped, but these techniques can limit their damage.
In fact, various studies draw more complex pictures. Some have suggested that Internet and digital technology impair the performance of specific learning and memory tasks, or not. For example, those who navigate with a GPS device seem to be bad to recall the route. Ward, a psychologist at the University of Texas University, discovered that Google Information gave people a greater sense of knowledge. However, researchers say that there is no persuasive evidence that this technology has a more widespread harmful impact on memory. Elizabeth Marsh, a memory researcher at Duke University in Dallum, North Carolina, says that “Google is stupid” is “exaggeration.”
The revolution of artificial intelligence (AI) raises many questions. Large language models (LLMS), which are rapidly built into search engines and other software, are becoming part of everyday experience for most people. It can also affect learning and memory in a deeper way than conventional Internet search. “The whole chat GPT is a different level of technology,” What is the capital of Madagascar? “
Researchers, for example, suggest that chatbots and other AI tools can make people aware of their cognitive neglect ZY and even grow their hearts with real and wrong memories. Already, the generated AI is used to create “dead bot”, that is, to create digital avatars for dead people. “It’s a kind of thing we have never experienced,” said Andrew Hoskins, who is studying AI and memory at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.
Google effect
People have used technology to support memories for centuries, from printing presses to photos and video cameras. However, the idea that the Internet was eroding human memories has gained status after research 2 by Psychologist Betzy Sparrow. At the beginning of a series of experiments, they reported difficult questions, as if they were instinctively thinking about the Internet and computer.
In other tests, the participants seemed to be bad to remember the Trivia statement in the computer if the machine was told that the machine would save the memo. They often remembered a folder that preserved better facts than the information itself. This study has spread the idea of ”Google Effect”. This spreads the idea of weakening yourself because people use the Internet as an external memory bank.
However, some researchers later questioned the reliability of these results. Study3 in 2018 could not reproduce the first experiment in Sparrow’s 2011 study. This can explain the difference that Sparrow claims 4. Next, the second attempt to reproduce the same experiment could not be mirrored the original result 5. “Google Effects is plausible and attracts a lot of attention,” said the Berlin Psychological Psychologist, GUIDO HESSELMANN, made a second duplication. But he added, “When studying these ideas, it is necessary to apply higher standards.”
Studies show that people do not remember the route very well after navigating with GPS.Credit: WitThaya Prasongsin/Getty
Word is one of Daniel Wegner of Harvard University, a co -author of Sparrow, and is convinced in 2011 research. The results match the widely accepted concept 6 called transaction memory proposed by Wegner in the 1980s. This is said to reduce the burden that people remember information by sharing it with other people, such as spouses and colleagues.
However, if the transaction partner is the Internet, we may be relieved that we need to know a lot at all. “Why did you put your smartphone in your pocket and searching for Google is faster than searching for your heart, but why did you put it in your head?” This is a “cognitive off -road” format, and people use everything from list to calendars and telephone to reduce brain demands.
According to Carey Morewedge, who is studying decision making at Boston University, Massachusetz, some of the most powerful data that supports cognitive off -road is from the 2010 GPS Navigation 7 research. Participants of the driving simulator traveled on the route regardless of the support of GPS. Later, they were asked by memory to drive the same route. People who used GPS were not good at navigating as those who have never traveled on the route.
Research after virtual navigation skills suggests that the spatial memory of people using GPS deteriorates faster than the spatial memory of those who have used it. Similarly, some studies suggest that taking pictures can reduce the memories of objects taken. At least in a specific situation.
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Cognitive off -road is appropriate for adaptation because it releases a limited brain bandwidth to participate in other businesses. Research by researchers at the California University Santa Cruz school showed this effect. They asked students to study language documents and randomly assigned some to save them. The person who saved the first file was able to memorize words better in the second file.
Other research supports the idea that people depend on the Internet as a substitute memory. In Ward’s Study1, he asked the people to answer a series of trivia questions on Google or on their own. The person who used Google rated that he was more confident in his memory, rather than those who did not use the search engine later. Finding the answer did not seem to remind you of their ignorance. They made them think that the online knowledge was always their.
“Our knowledge is inside, and I think it’s stored from the outside, and we access it and feel it is ourselves,” says Ward. 。
Marsh says, “If you can’t remember anything later, you may be one of the reasons you were very surprised.” Her experimental 10 suggests that this phenomenon may be due to search results displayed as a list of web links, including snippets of pages. A glimpse of these previews, and when you select the page, you will create a feeling that you are used to the content of the page (what psychologists call priming). This effect can lead to overrated your knowledge. Researchers do not yet know if these types of misunderstandings will worsen because the search engine provides a summary generated by AI at the top of the search results.
Overload of information
In 2022, the use of technology use and memory, and together, the same task of memory performance, such as learning the routes and photographed items from the research so far, and the Internet and technology. He says that there is a persuasive study from research that it can be given.
