Too Distracted to Remember: Does Attentional Disengagement Underlie the Photo-Taking Impairment Effect?

Research shows that when people take pictures of items around them, they have impaired memory for these items. Two theoretical accounts have emerged for this so-called photo-taking impairment effect: the offloading hypothesis and the attentional disengagement hypothesis. Given that previous studies seem to point towards the attentional disengagement hypothesis as the most plausible explanation, this study directly tested whether attentional mechanisms underlie the photo-taking impairment effect. One hundred and one undergraduate students observed, took a simple picture, and took the best possible picture (which increased the attentional demand) of fifteen paintings. After a filler task, their memory for visual details of the paintings was tested through a multiple-choice test. The results failed to show the photo-taking impairment effect, since participants recalled a similar number of visual details in each of the three conditions. These results also run counter to the attentional disengagement hypothesis in that the increased attentional demand did not yield a more pronounced memory impairment. A meta-analysis of the photo-taking impairment effect speaks to the heterogeneity of the effect and calls for future studies into the phenomenon’s generalizability and the circumstances under which it presents.