REVISION FOR CUMULATIVE EXAM 3 – READING
TEXT 2. PHOTOGRAPHY AND MEMORY
1 People worldwide upload more than one billion images a day, preserving their memories to enjoy them in
the future. However, it turns out that photography may be preventing our memory from remembering the events
correctly or well. How does the need to capture the moment change how we actually experience the moment,
both in the present and when we try to recall it later?
2 One of the major reasons we take photos is to remember important moments such as the birth of a baby
or a wedding long after they have passed. In 2015, Manoush Zamarodi conducted a project in which she
challenged 20,000 people to detach from their smartphones in order to increase their creativity. When she
surveyed the participants about all the reasons why they usually took photos, many said they used photos as a
“memory aid,” taking pictures of things like parking spots or the label of something at a market to buy later.
However, they didn’t know that every time they snap a quick picture of something, they could in fact be harming
their memory of it.
3 Linda Henkel, a professor of psychology, studied how taking photos impacts experience and memory by
making an experiment using a group of undergraduates on a guided tour of the university’s museum of art. The
students were asked to take photos of some objects that they looked at on the tour and to simply observe others.
The next day, she brought the students into her research lab to test their memory of all the objects they had seen
on the tour. Whenever they remembered a piece of work, she asked follow-up questions about specific visual
details. The results were clear: overall, people remembered fewer of the objects they had photographed. They
also couldn’t recall as many specific visual details of the photographed art, compared to the art they had only
observed.
4 “When you take a photo of something, you rely on the camera to remember the experience for you,”
Henkel said. “You’re basically saying, ‘Okay, I don’t need to think about this any further. The camera has captured
it.’ You don’t engage in any processing that really would help you remember it.” In other words, if your camera
captures the moment, then your brain doesn’t. Henkel gave this situation a name: the photo-taking-impairment
effect. Of course, our brains are not capable of remembering every detail, but isn’t that what photos are for: to
help our fallible memories?
5 Henkel agrees that the purpose of redistributing our memory to devices can free up our brains to do other
cognitive processing. According to her, the problem is that people constantly go from one thing to the next.
Therefore, instead of having energy to focus their attention on more important tasks, they have the constant
stream of the next thing, and never fully feel any of the experiences they actually have. Nonetheless, Henkel and
her student Katelyn Parisi ran another study to see what happens to memory when people have photos to remind
them of a moment or object. They found that “In the real world, we are so busy capturing photos that afterwards
we don’t actually look at them.”
6 However, there was one way in which taking pictures did not erode people’s memories in Henkel’s
experiments. In the art museum study, “When participants zoomed in to photograph a specific part of the object,
their detail memory was not affected badly; moreover, they remembered each detail about the object in addition
to the zoomed part,” the professor wrote. “This suggests that the additional attention and cognitive processes
engaged by this focused activity can eliminate the photo-taking-impairment effect.”
7 How taking photos affects our understanding of ourselves and of the things we are photographing is still a
big question mark. But as a result of her experiments, there is one thing Henkel is sure of. “Cameras, as amazing as
they are, can’t compare to what the brain is capable of with input from the eyes and the ears,” she said. Maybe,
you can look around and enjoy the moment instead of taking a photograph.
Read the text and answer the questions below.
1. What is the text mainly about?
A) What can be done to prevent the adverse effects of photographing the moment
B) How photography can help people remember the objects they observe better
C) How photographing the moment affects the way we remember the things negatively
D) What the negative effects of photography are on social life
2. According to paragraph 2, in Manoush Zamarodi’s project, ---.
A) the participants were asked to use their phone only for creative activities
B) the researcher asked the participants about their main reason for using smartphones
C) remembering important things later was the reason why many participants took photos
D) many participants used a photo application called memory aid to remember important things later
3. Which of the following is FALSE according to paragraph 3?
A) Linda Henkel studied a group of students to understand the effects of taking photos on experience and
memory.
B) The students took photos of objects that were observed by other people on a guided tour in the university’s
museum of art.
C) Linda Henkel tested the memory of students by asking them questions about the objects they had seen the
previous day.
D) The students were able to remember fewer specific details of the objects they had photographed than the ones
they had only looked at.
4. In paragraph 4, the word “this” refers to ---.
A) a photo of something C) any processing
B) the camera D) the experience
5. In paragraph 4, the word “fallible” is closest in meaning to ---.
A) imperfect C) accurate
B) trustworthy D) personal
6. Which of the following CANNOT be understood from paragraph 5?
A) People usually forget to look at the photos they have taken before.
B) Taking photos all the time prevents people from living the moment they are in.
C) Henkel thinks using devices helps our brains to do other mental processing.
D) Photos remind people of the moments they experienced afterwards even if they don’t look at them again.
7. In paragraph 6, the word “erode” could best be replaced by ---.
A) neglect
B) fix
C) preserve
D) reduce
8. Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A) The project conducted by Manoush Zamarodi aimed to develop creativity by decreasing cell phone use.
B) Linda Henkel used the term “photo-impairment-effect” to show the help of photograph on memory.
C) If a specific part of an object is zoomed, students can only remember details of the zoomed part.
D) The writer advises readers to use the cameras more frequently as they are amazing in some ways compared to
the brain.
Answer Key: 1. c 2. c 3. b 4. d 5. a 6. d 7. d 8. a
