Photographing Moments Compromises Ability to Remember Them

According to a recent study, focusing on snapping pictures instead of on the event at hand can interrupt the process of committing experiences to memory.

If you take lots of photos to remember the good times, you may be defeating your own purpose.

According to a recent study, focusing on snapping pictures instead of on the event at hand can interrupt the process of committing experiences to memory.

The counterintuitive phenomenon is called the "photo-taking impairment effect".

To put the theory to the test, researchers at Fairfield University in Connecticut let their subjects loose in a campus museum.

Participants were instructed to either take pictures of particular works or just commit them to memory.

When quizzed the next day, those that employed the technological means of remembering didn't fare as well in describing the artworks as did those who just looked at them.

In the next run of the experiment, the team added a twist asking that the photographs taken include a detail shot.

In that case, those that took a moment to focus on a part of the whole did much better when it came to recalling details about the piece at large.

The study's author believes that the extra level of engagement allowed for the formation of more specific memories.