A study has claimed that people who take photos of exhibits in museums or galleries have a worse memory about their visit than those who walk around without a camera.
The topic is interesting due to the ongoing debate about visitors taking photos of galleries, or when on tours.
I do appreciate the limits on photography on tours, as it really does slow down the tour considerably as people keep stopping to get their snaps.
However, in a museum, some people seem to have an almost fundamentalist disapproval of photography almost as if to take a photo is disrespectful somehow. So long as flash isn’t used, and the photographer isn’t one of those tedious arty sorts who spends ages getting a single perfect photo, I naturally tend to disagree.
In the study though, psychological scientist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University presented data showing that participants had worse memory for objects, and for specific object details, when they took photos of them.
An experiment was set up in the Bellarmine Museum of Art at Fairfield University. Undergraduates were led on a tour around the museum and were asked to take note of certain objects, either by photographing them or by simply observing them. The next day, their memory for the objects was tested.
The data showed that participants were less accurate in recognizing the objects they had photographed compared to those they had only observed. Furthermore, they weren’t able to answer as many questions about the objects’ visual details for those objects they had photographed.
Henkel calls this the “photo-taking impairment effect”:
“When people rely on technology to remember for them — counting on the camera to record the event and thus not needing to attend to it fully themselves — it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences,” she explains.
On a personal basis, I take photos for two purposes — one to use on the blog or for personal reasons, and those are the photos I spend a moment trying to get to look as good as my elderly camera can cope with.
However, the biggest use for my camera is note-taking. I snap away like mad as it is simply so much quicker than writing down the contents on display cards, or I want visual “sketches” of a room or display. I could write down the contents of the display card by hand if I needed to, but it seems a very time consuming thing to do when there is a camera handy.
And my own handwriting is so bad that a photo is easier to read when I get home!
So while I accept my own use is rather less usual, I find that using a camera to snapshot a venue is a huge help to my memory of what I saw, often as I am trying to capture an overall impression of a space, not minute details of individual objects.
The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Incidentally, whenever I am in a venue that bans photography, and then ask if they have any press photos, they invariably send close up photos of the objects, and very rarely photos of the wider gallery space. Yet., it is those wider photos that I prefer to take as they convey a better idea of the size of the gallery and what the overall room feels like.
Oh, and I am a lazy writer, and photos save so much effort when writing a blog post.
Interesting study. I wonder though…the testing was done after just one day. What would the results be after one year? I suspect that people like you and I, who store many of their pics on sites like Flickr, would recall the objects much better than those who simply observed, just from stumbling across the photos from time to time and refreshing the memory.
I would hazard a guess that the act of physically writing a description down triggers a wider range of memories in the brain due to a wider range of skills needed to capture the information — visual, speech, words, etc — than a click on a phone camera.
Hence, with a broader spectrum of memories to tap into the brain is better able to recall the object description.
If you really want to remember something – draw it!
Interesting topic. Having been a non-photographer for most of my life, my digital compact has transformed that and my way of thinking. It’s not about recalling things tomorrow or a week later, but longer term memories. It also enables research to take place post visit. It helps if you have an outlet for photos. At The Hermitage in St Petersburg, you paid a small charge to be allowed to take photos. I now have a personal album that I love to browse from time to time.
However I do sometimes question whether I am being disrespectful and try to be discreet. I love the idea of sketching and often envy those doing so in galleries.
Snapping away is now ubiquious at events and parades. Guilty there too. But worrying trend is to use an iPad as camera. Oh no – you’re blocking my view….
As a teacher I felt children drawing objects helped them get more from a visit than taking photos because they looked really closely. You need photos for a blog post though. I don’t think you’d recognise my sketches!
I also read the study and wondered ‘what about the impact for LONGER than a day?’.
There’s a HUGE difference in annoyance factor between someone who takes a quick (flash-free) snap, and someone who stands there for 20 minutes drawing something. I know which *I*’d rather be stuck behind – and yet the former is unacceptable to most museums, and the latter is encouraged.
I’d like to see it made mandatory that any museum or gallery who puts on an exhibition (especially one which they CHARGE an entry fee) must have a clear indication on their website and ALL their advertising if they are going to restrict the use of flash/ non-flash photography.
I’d suggest that this information be required to be presented everywhere the prices are shown, and in large icons, so that a patron is aware of this before-hand. Would be interested (as a result) to see how many people don’t bother to go to an exhibition if they can’t take photos to tell their friends about it. I think that’s why most museums don’t make this clear until AFTER you’ve paid for tickets.
It just seems so weird to me that the museums don’t want the free advertising that patrons give them when they post the photos on a social media site.