What Happens to Memory for Lecture Content When Students Take Photos of the Lecture Slides?

Abstract

Students often take photos of slides during lectures. Research on the photo-taking-impairment effect suggests that this behavior could impair memory for lecture content, whereas other work suggests that photo-taking could cause memory benefits, at least for visually presented information. Two experiments examined the effect of photographing lecture slides on memory for information that appeared on the lecture slides as well as information only spoken aloud by the lecturer. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to take photos of some lecture slides, but not others, before being tested on memory for the material. Experiment 2 employed a yoked design in which half of the participants took photos of slides volitionally, whereas the other half were assigned to photograph the same slides nonvolitionally. Across both experiments, a photo-taking benefit was observed for on-slide information, regardless of volition condition. These findings contrasted with participants’ metacognitive judgments of when taking a photo would benefit their memory.