To investigate the impact of screenshotting on memory performance compared to viewing material directly.
Approach:
Study Design: Seven preregistered experiments involving 892 undergraduate students were conducted to assess memory performance related to screenshots versus viewed material.
Experiments Overview: Participants used their smartphones to either view or screenshot visual material before completing various memory and cognitive tasks.
Memory Assessment: Experiments measured recognition, recall, and source memory accuracy across different conditions, including incidental encoding and conscious cognitive offloading.
Key Findings:
Memory performance was lower for screenshotted material compared to viewed material across all experiments.
In Experiment 2, recognition accuracy was 70% for screenshotted images versus 78% for viewed images.
Source memory accuracy was 54% for screenshotted images compared to 71% for viewed images.
No significant cognitive benefits were observed in tasks following screenshotting.
Limitations:
The study primarily involved undergraduate students aged 17 to 27, which may limit generalizability to older adults.
The study did not assess the impact of cognitive impairment on memory performance related to screenshotting.
