Passage A Memory Revolution
A Memory Revolution
A high school senior logs on to a computer at the library to double-check the application due date listed on a college admissions website. Nearby, a librarian helps a group of biology students use a database to search for recent studies about mammals. In the past few decades, the Internet has become an integral component of daily life for many people. The seemingly limitless power of search engines made the Internet search extremely common, and today people increasingly rely on the Internet’s vast accumulation of sources to access all types of information. Scientists are beginning to examine how this reliance is modifying the strategies people use to store and prioritize information in their mind.
A Dependable and Valuable Asset
Psychologist Benjamin Storm from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and researchers Sean Stone and Aaron Benjamin devised an experiment to study students’ tendency to depend on the Internet for facts. To begin, the scientists divided sixty participants into multiple groups, including an “Internet” group and a “memory” group, and placed them in front of computers. The Internet group was required to use the search engine Google to answer eight challenging trivia questions. In contrast, participants in the memory group were permitted to use only their personal knowledge to answer the questions. In the second round, the researchers administered notably easier questions. This time, they allowed each group the option of using Google as they answered. Their results showed that 83 percent of the Internet group continued to consult Google in the second round, while only 63 percent of the memory group chose to do so.
People’s growing inclination to rely on the Internet in order to retrieve information, particularly facts and figures, is called cognitive offloading. Canadian researcher Evan F. Risko and British researcher Sam Gilbert, who have written extensively about the topic, say a similar process has been taking place for centuries. In the past, people used resources like encyclopedias to assist their memories; however, today the Internet, serving as a vast extended memory, allows people to digitally access and retrieve much larger volumes of information. Consequently, people’s minds are free for other cognitive feats, such as connecting data, learning new information, or solving problems.
Filing Information Away
The use of the Internet also appears to be modifying the strategies people use to store information in their mind. Researchers Betsy Sparrow from Columbia University, Jenny Liu from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Daniel Wegner from Harvard University conducted several studies to discover how people efficiently manage their information intake.
To begin, the researchers examined how people evaluate which information deserves their effort to remember. For this experiment, participants read forty trivia facts, such as “An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain,” and typed the statements into a computer file. Half the participants had been previously told the file would be saved, while half believed it would be erased. Next, the participants wrote down every fact they could recall. Those who believed the information would be erased and no longer available could recall 40 percent more facts than those who thought the information would be saved.
In another experiment, the same researchers tested the ability of study participants to remember where to access information. For this trial, participants read and typed trivia statements, which they saved in folders with generic names such as “Facts” and “Items.” After spending ten minutes writing down all the facts they could recall from memory, participants were asked which folder contained a particular fact based on a keyword. For example, “Which folder has the fact about ostriches?” Overall, participants recalled the information’s location more often than the content itself, correctly identifying 49 percent of the folders for specific facts while remembering only 23 percent of the actual trivia. The researchers concluded that our memory is adapting to the Internet age by prioritizing where to locate information even when the specific details are forgotten. According to Sparrow, the Internet has become an important form of transactive memory, an external source of the recollections and associative networks that constitute memory.
As the Internet’s resources continue to expand our “external” memory, some question whether the process may cause people to depend too heavily on technology. However, Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, says, “Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.”
Question
Which sentence from the passage suggests that using Internet search engines may lead people to rely less on their own ability to recall information?
- A“In the past few decades, the Internet has become an integral component of daily life for many people.” (paragraph 1)
- B“The Internet group was required to use the search engine Google to answer eight challenging trivia questions.” (paragraph 2)
- C“Their results showed that 83 percent of the Internet group continued to consult Google in the second round, while only 63 percent of the memory group chose to do so.” (paragraph 2)
- D“In the past, people used resources like encyclopedias to assist their memories; however, today the Internet, serving as a vast extended memory, allows people to digitally access and retrieve much larger volumes of information.” (paragraph 3)
Show the answer
Correct answer: C
The question asks which sentence from the passage suggests that using Internet search engines may lead people to rely less on their own ability to recall information.
A. Incorrect. While the sentence in paragraph 1 refers to the increase in use that has made the Internet “an integral component” of everyday life for many people, it does not address memory or explain the effect of Internet use on a person’s ability to recall information.
B. Incorrect. Although the sentence in paragraph 2 refers to research that was conducted to determine how the use of the Internet affects a person’s memory, the sentence simply explains one guideline of the study. The fact that the study required one group of participants to use Google does not indicate whether using a search engine affects the degree to which people rely on their own ability to recall information.
C. CORRECT. The sentence in paragraph 2 reveals the results of a study that allowed one group of participants to use Google to obtain answers to trivia questions and initially required another group to use only their memory to answer questions. The sentence states that “83 percent of the Internet group continued to consult Google in the second round” and that “only 63 percent of the memory group chose to do so.” These statistics demonstrate that using Google in the first round resulted in participants in the “Internet” group relying more heavily on the Internet search engine to recall information in the second round, whereas participants who did not use Google in the first round were more likely to rely on their own ability to recall information.
D. Incorrect. The sentence in paragraph 3 compares the Internet to older resources, such as encyclopedias, that allowed people to access and retrieve large amounts of information. Although the sentence states that people have always used resources “to assist their memories,” it does not describe whether people mainly rely on their own ability or on the Internet to recall information.
Question analysis
Students read four sentences from “A Memory Revolution,” an article on what constant Internet searching does to human memory, and pick the one suggesting that search engines may lead people to trust their own memory less. The quotations range from the article’s opening to its discussion of a trivia experiment and of cognitive offloading, so the task is inferring what each implies rather than spotting a familiar word.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 A typical grade 7 evidence item asks for a sentence that states or plainly supports a point. Here no quotation states it, so students must judge what each implies when read with the paragraph around it.
- Estimated difficulty
- Moderate: several steps, or a close reading with one strong distractor.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly evaluate
- What makes it hard
- Reading between the lines moderate
- A very close wrong answer minor
- Much to keep track of minor
- Evidence
- Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 14, 763 words; question and choices: about grade 14, 125 words.
- Corrected from the DOE handbook
- In the explanation of the correct answer, a description of how the study divided its participants was corrected.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
None of the quotations states the idea in the question, so each must be judged by what it implies. The hardest to set aside is paragraph 3’s description of the Internet as “a vast extended memory,” which sounds like the claim but compares the Internet with encyclopedias and shows no effect of searching on recall. Only a measured result, the Internet group’s greater return to Google, can show that using search engines changes how people rely on their memory.
Reading between the lines moderate Working it out
The right sentence gives only two percentages and never mentions memory, so students must infer that turning to Google for “notably easier questions” shows less trust in one’s own recall. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
A very close wrong answer minor Choosing the answer
Paragraph 2’s Google study supplies two of the quotations, both about the Internet group: one gives the rule it followed in round one, the other what it did once searching was optional. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Ascalon et al., 2007)
Much to keep track of minor Working it out
The 83 and 63 percent make sense only if students keep track of two groups and two rounds: which group had to search at first, and that both could choose Google later. (Sweller, 1988; Carpenter, Just & Shell, 1990)
Strategy: Turn the stem into a yes-or-no question about people who use search engines, then see which quotation offers information that could actually answer it.
Traps
- Supports only part of the claim: In a question about evidence: a line that backs one half of the claim but not the other, or a related point rather than the claim itself.
- True but not the answer: A choice says something accurate about the text that does not answer this question.
The wrong answers, classified
A True but not the answer (King et al., 2004; Embretson & Wetzel, 1987)
Takes the claim that the Internet is “an integral component of daily life” as a sign of dependence, but the sentence only sets the scene and says nothing about recall.
B Supports only part of the claim (King et al., 2004; Thissen, Steinberg & Fitzpatrick, 1989)
Finds the right study and the words “search engine Google,” but the sentence gives only what the Internet group was required to do in round one, not what it later chose.
D Supports only part of the claim (King et al., 2004; Thissen, Steinberg & Fitzpatrick, 1989)
Sees the Internet called “a vast extended memory,” which sounds like the claim, but the sentence only compares it with encyclopedias as a memory aid and shows no change in reliance on recall.
What was corrected from the DOE handbook, and why
- Explanation: The handbook’s explanation of Option C says the sentence reveals the results of a study that “allowed half the participants to use Google to obtain answers to trivia questions and initially required the other half to use only their memory.” Paragraph 2 does not split the participants in half: the scientists “divided sixty participants into multiple groups, including an ‘Internet’ group and a ‘memory’ group.” The site now says the study “allowed one group of participants to use Google … and initially required another group to use only their memory.” The answer, C, is unchanged.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This is an evidence question. The idea is that using search engines may make people lean less on their own memory. To recall means to bring back to mind. A search engine is a website, like Google, that finds information for you. Look for a sentence that shows people trusting Google more than their own memory.
Find the study in paragraph 2
Scientists split people into groups, including an Internet group and a memory group. In round 1, “The Internet group was required to use the search engine Google to answer eight challenging trivia questions.” The memory group could use only what they already knew. In round 2, the questions were “notably easier.” This time, each group could choose whether to use Google.
Read the results
Group Round 1 Round 2: chose Google Internet group had to use Google 83 percent Memory group memory only 63 percent The round 2 questions were easier, so people had a better chance of knowing the answers. Yet the Internet group still used Google more often, by 20 people out of every 100. Using Google first seems to have made them reach for it instead of their own memory.
Check each choice
- A does not fit. It says the Internet is “an integral component,” or a key part, of daily life. It says nothing about memory.
- B does not fit. It gives a rule of the study, what one group had to do. A rule is not a result.
- C fits. It gives the result: the group that had used Google kept choosing it, even for easier questions.
- D does not fit. It compares the Internet with encyclopedias as memory helpers. It shows no change in how much people trust their own memory.
Watch out: D calls the Internet “a vast extended memory,” which sounds like the idea in the question. But it only says how much the Internet can hold.
Choose the answer
Only C shows what people did once they were free to choose. The group that started with Google kept leaning on it. So the answer is C.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
D is the closest wrong choice, since it calls the Internet “a vast extended memory.” But it only compares the Internet with encyclopedias. It shows nothing about what happens to people who search. C gives a result. Given a free choice, 83 percent of the Internet group used Google, but only 63 percent of the memory group did.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “A Memory Revolution” as printed (pages 3–4)
