Sparrow et al (2001)
Uses: digital tech, google effect/transactive memory
Aim: to investigate if the Internet has become an enormous transactive memory store
Method: true experiment / survey
Procedure:
Sixty undergraduate students (37 f, 23 m) at Harvard University were asked to type 40 trivia facts into the computer. Some are new knowledge some are known knowledge.
Participants were presented with trivia statements one by one on a computer screen. They were asked to read the statements, and then type what they read into a dialog box which appeared below the statement. Half of the participants were told to press the spacebar to save what they typed to the computer, and that they would have access to what they typed at the end of the task. The other half were told to press the spacebar in order to erase what they just typed so that they could type the next statement. In addition, half were told to try to remember the statements, and half were told nothing.
They were then given a blank piece of paper and asked to recall as many of the facts as they could in ten minutes. Then they were given a recognition task where they were given forty statements and asked to identify (yes or no) whether they were exactly the same as what they saw on the computer screen.
Result:
The results showed that being asked to remember the information made no significant difference to the participants’ ability to recall the trivia facts, but there was a significant difference if the participant believed that the information would be stored in the computer. Participants who believed they would be able to retrieve the information from the computer appear to have made far less effort to remember the information than those who knew they would not be able to do this.