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While some people may still name all European capitals years after leaving school, others no longer know what lunch was the day before. And while some days we manage to perfectly reproduce the content of a book, on others we fail to remember the end of a particular movie.
Scientists have studied where these differences come from. As they report in the journal Nature, pupil movements and brain waves make it possible to predict whether or not someone will remember a certain thing. It seems to be more damaging to your memory if you do multimedia multitasking often, i.e. watch TV and surf the Internet at the same time.
Test with 80 subjects
In their experiment, scientists from Stanford University in the United States conducted various memory exercises with 80 subjects between the ages of 18 and 26. Meanwhile, their pupillary reactions and brain waves were recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG), specifically so-called alpha activity. “The increase in alpha activity in the back of the skull has been linked to inattention, wandering and distraction,” said lead psychologist and author Kevin Madore.
“We also know that constrictions in the pupil diameter, especially before performing various activities, are related to performance degradations such as slower reaction times and wandering thoughts,” adds Madore.
The researchers also measured the subjects’ ability to remain alert by examining how well they were able to see a gradual change in an image. Additionally, they inquired about their media multitasking habits, i.e. how often they watched TV and texted or surfed the internet at the same time.
Multimedia multitasking affects memory
The result: Those subjects with shorter attention spans and more multimedia-intensive multitasking behavior also worsened on memory exercises. However, this is initially a correlation, not causation, the authors point out.
However, the hypothesis that media multitasking has an influence on memory, explains psychologist and cognitive scientist Simon Hanslmayr of the University of Glasgow in an independent classification of the study. Overall, the correlation shown is one that has not yet been described.
Another merit of the study is that it examines the role of attention in remembering, says Hanslmayr: “We already know a lot about how attention directs information storage, but little about how attention affects the retrieval of this information.” The authors could now have analyzed fluctuations in subjects ‘attention and, with the help of EEGs and pupils’ recordings, could determine whether or not someone remembers.
Remembering is important to function
Remembering is a skill people use and need every day to function, says Hanslmayr. How fundamentally important this is has been shown by diseases that affect memory, such as Alzheimer’s.
Indeed, the study authors hope their research will contribute to a better understanding of such diseases. In conclusion, the scientists point out that memory largely depends on targeted cognition: we must be prepared to remember, turn our attention on and off, and have a memory goal in mind – factors that acted and determined before actually remembering. if you can activate your memory.
Targeted interventions are conceivable to this end. For example, the researchers envision wearable eye sensors that use pupil size to detect in real time whether the wearer is inattentive and then send a corresponding signal. (SDA)
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