Host: The Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology
People often record some information by external memory tools, such as a digital camera, although photographing lead to poor memory of photographed information (Henkel, 2013). However, it is unclear whether photographing affect our memory except photographed information. We investigated whether photographing information enhance subsequent learning. In a photograph block, participants studied list A and then photographed them. Next, participants studied list B and then took a free-recall test for list B. Finally, participants re-learned list A item by watching the photograph and then took the free-recall test for list A. In a control block was the same as the photograph block except that photographing and re-learning were omitted. Our results showed that memory performance of list B in the photograph block was higher than that in the control block both when proactive interference was low and high. Thus, we suggest that photographing can enhance subsequent learning.
