The Google effect: interference in human intellectual functionality

reflection on the effect that the assiduous use of technology has on higher cognitive abilities of the human being is not a new event. Already in the sixties, after the appearance of the first communication tools such as the telephone, television or radio, some experts began to relate both concepts.

One of the pioneering figures in trying to understand the impact of technology on the human being and on society as a whole was Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), a Canadian professor specializing in communication theory who introduced the concept "global village" to refer to said freak.

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Access to information: benefit or drawback?

Just like today with the main social networks and information search engines on the Internet, the appearance of such informative instruments of yesteryear had a very relevant role and revolutionary in the access to information by society, occurring in a more quick and universal. Also then, as could happen in the current era, the first controversies about this phenomenon arose.

Thus, while a part of society seemed to emphasize the benefits and advances that such technological discoveries could imply in the process of transmitting information, information at a global level, another collective portion expressed the fear that, paradoxically, greater ease of access to information could lead to a cultural impoverishment.

Almost two decades after the start of the 21st century, we find ourselves at the same crossroads: such a volume of information can both be linked to the idea of ​​belonging to a more democratic or “more informed” social system or may be associated with malicious practices through a biased, manipulated or partial dissemination of information.

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New technologies in human cognitive functionality

This first debate was the starting point on the basis of which other related dilemmas were later developed. An issue that over the years has become relevant in research on this area of ​​knowledge, refers to the analysis of the own means of communication (among others, Internet search engines, such as Google) and the implications that its continued use could have Have on the way in which the functionality of the human intellect is configured.

Based on the idea that the constant use of this type of knowledge tools can significantly modulate, modify and influence the way of perceiving, encoding, memorizing, and recovering the information received, it could be hypothesized how these modifications could end up playing a role relevant in the activity of human higher intellectual functions, such as decision-making where these lower cognitive processes converge.

From sequential processing to simultaneous processing

The explanation for this hypothesis would be based on a change in the way in which the human Nervous System receives a certain type of stimulation. In times prior to the revolution of new technologies, mental processes such as those indicated used to occur in the mind in a sequential and linear way, since the reception of the information lacked the immediacy that it has in the present.

However, after the massive rise of the Internet (in combination with other existing means of communication) information has come to be obtained quickly and simultaneously through various sources; Today it is common practice to have different tabs open in the PC browser, while listening to the news on the television and receiving notifications from the mobile phone.

All this leads to internalize as habitual the fact of being exposed to a "constant bombardment" of information, whose The final consequence seems to lead to a decrease in the analysis capacity of each set of data received individually. and deep. Decreasing the time dedicated to reflect and value each new information received, if this is maintained sufficiently over time, there is a pernicious interference in the critical capacity itself, in the elaboration of a criterion based on the own conclusions, and ultimately, in effective decision-making.

To this phenomenon must be added the consideration of the existing discrepancy between the unlimited data storage capacity that technological tools present and the limited capacity intrinsic to human memory. The first causes interference in the second due to an information overload effect. This consequence seems to point to the origin of the usual problems in relation to the attention difficulties that many children, young people and adults currently present. Browsing the Internet involves intensive multitasking processes in a sustained manner over time.

Such an abrupt change from one micro-task to another prevents sustained attentional capacity from developing competently, since it is constantly being interrupted. Despite this great drawback, this type of operation presents a secondary gain that makes it difficult to reject or ignore it by part of the individual towards technology: block alerts, notifications and other notices and information from the Internet, social networks, etc., would imply for the subject a feeling of social isolation hard to accept.

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the google effect

In 2011 the team of Sparrow, Liu and Wegner published a paper that exposed the effects of using the Internet search engine Google on memory, the called the "Google effect", and the consequences that the fact of having information available in a way that could have on cognitive processes immediate. The conclusions revealed that easy access to an Internet browser causes a decrease the mental effort that the human brain has to put into motion to store and encode data obtained.

Thus, the Internet has become a kind of attached external hard drive with no limits to its own memory which has an advantage over the latter, as indicated above.

More specifically, one of the various experiments that supported the conclusions drawn by Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner (2011) compared the level of I remember three groups of students who had been asked to read some information in some leisure magazines and to try to retain it in their memory. memory.

A first group was guaranteed that they could consult the information saved later in a file on an accessible PC. A second group was told that the information would be erased once memorized. The last group was told that they could access the information but in a hard-to-find file on the PC.

In the results it was observed that the subjects who could consult the data later easily (group 1) showed very low levels of effort to remember the data. The probands that remembered the most data were the individuals who were told that the data would be deleted once they were memorized (group 2). The third group was situated in the middle ground in terms of the amount of information retained in memory. In addition, another surprising finding for the team of researchers lay in verifying the high capacity of the experimental subjects to remember how to access the information stored in the PC, which had not been retained in one's own memory.

transactive memory

One of the authors of the research, Wegner, in the 80s proposed the concept of transactive memory, a concept that aims to define the "carelessness" at the mental level for the retention of data that another person already possesses. That is to say, it would be equivalent to the tendency to economize cognitive efforts by delegating to an external figure a certain volume of data in order to be more effective in problem solving and decision making. decisions.

This phenomenon has been a fundamental element that has allowed the development and cognitive-intellectual specialization of the human species. This fact implicitly entails some pros and cons: the fact of specializing in more specific areas of knowledge entails implicitly the quantitative loss in the volume of general knowledge available to an individual although, on the other hand, this has permitted a qualitative increase in efficiency when performing a specific task.

Another of the key points on which it is worth reflecting on in relation to the construct of transactive memory consists precisely in assessing the difference between the fact of delegating a certain memory capacity to another person (a natural living being) and doing it to an entity artificial such as the Internet, since artificial memory presents very different characteristics with respect to biological memory and staff. In the computerized memory the information arrives, is stored completely and immediately and is recovered in the same way, as it was archived at source. Instead, human memory is subject to processes of reconstruction and re-elaboration of the memory.

This is due to the relevant influence that personal experiences have on the form and content of one's own memories. Thus, various scientific studies have shown that when a memory is recovered from the long-term memory store, new neural connections not present in the memory are established. moment in which such an experience occurred and was filed in the mind: the brain that remembers (information retrieval) is not the same one that once generated the memory (file of the information).

In conclusion

Although neuroscience It has not yet defined exactly whether new technologies are modifying our brain, it has been possible to clearly conclude that the brain of a reading person is significantly different from that of an illiterate person, for example. This has been possible since reading and writing appeared about 6,000 years ago, a sufficiently long period of time to assess such anatomical differences in depth. To assess the impact of new technologies on our brain, it would be necessary to wait a little longer.

What does seem certain is that these types of information tools present both gains and losses for general cognitive ability. Regarding multi-task performance, localization, information classification, perception and imagination, and visual-spatial skills, we can talk about gains.

Furthermore, new technologies can be very useful in research on pathologies associated with memory. Regarding the losses, it is mainly the capacity for focused and sustained attention or the reasoned or critical and reflective thinking.

Bibliographic references:

• Garcia, E. (2018). We are our memory. Remember and forget. Ed: Bonalletra Alcompas S.L.: Spain.
• McLuhan, M. (2001). Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man. Ed. Routledge: New York.
• Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. m. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 476-478.
• Wegner, D.M. (1986). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. in b. Mullen and G.R. Goethals (eds.): Theories of group behavior (185-208). New York: Springer-Verlag.