How smartphone use could improve memory: study

Adam Barnes
·2 min read

Story at a glance

  • Using digital devices to store vital information could clear the mental space to recall less important things.

  • Researchers at University College London found that digital devices help people remember both saved and unsaved information.

  • “When people had to remember by themselves, they used their memory capacity to remember the most important information,” the study’s senior author said.

Using a digital device such as a smartphone could improve memory by allowing people to store vital information externally while freeing up mental space to recall less important things, according to a recent study.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, pushes back on theories that overusing technology could lead to cognitive decline.

Researchers at University College London found using a smartphone as external memory helps people remember the information saved on the phone, as well as unsaved information.

For the study, 158 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 71 were shown up to 12 numbered circles on a screen and tasked with remembering to drag some either to the left or right — high value or low value — with the number of circles participants remembered to drag determining their pay at the end of the experiment.

Participants completed the task 16 times, for half of which they were allowed to set reminders to do so on their devices.

Researchers found participants leaned toward storing information about the high-value circles on the device, which improved their memory by 18 percent. Further, participants’ memory for low-value circles increased by 27 percent.

But the researchers also found that using reminders came at a price, as results showed participants were more apt to remember low-value circles that were unsaved in the device when the reminders were taken away.

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The study’s senior author Sam Gilbert said that people’s memory improved because using the device “shifted the way that people used their memory to store high-importance versus low-importance information.”

“When people had to remember by themselves, they used their memory capacity to remember the most important information,” Gilbert said.

“The results show that external memory tools work. Far from causing ‘digital dementia’, using an external memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved,” Gilbert continued. “But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but lower-importance information in our own memory.”

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