The Influence Of The Internet On Memory

while people are using the Internet,the Internet also affect people’s perceptions and thoughts.Previous studies have found that the Internet had an impact on memory,and some researchers have also found that the Internet had an impact on meta-memory.However,these studies have neither conducted a delicate investigation of various processing stages of memory,nor have they explored the internal mechanism of the influence of the Internet on memory from the perspective of meta-memory.This paper would intend to carry out three studies.On the one hand,from the information processing stage of memory,we would gradually explore whether the Internet could have an impact on memory,what kind of impact it would have,and the specific stages of impact(including study 1 and 2);on the other hand,from the aspects of meta-memory,we would discuss whether the internal mechanisms of the influence of the Internet on memory are related to memory strategies(Study 3).In study 1,we examined the impact of the Internet on memory encoding,including two experiments(Experiment 1a and Experiment 1b).In experiment 1a,we set the retrieval stage as “No-Internet retrieval environment” to examine whether the Internet environment had influence on memory in the encoding stage.In experiment 1b,we set the retrieval stage as “Internet retrieval environment” to exclude the influence of encoding specificity principle.It was found that,regardless of the retrieval environment,the memory performance under the Internet encoding condition was significantly lower than the No-Internet encoding condition,indicating that the Internet would cause memory impairment effects on memory encoding.In study 2,we mainly focused on the impact of the Internet on memory retrieval,including one experiment(Experiment 2).This experiment adopted retrieval practice paradigm,which was added the retrieval practice phase between the encoding and retrieval stages to examine the memory retrieval process.The retrieval practice phase examined the impact of the Internet on memory retrieval by manipulating different retrieval practice conditions and different Internet retrieval environments.The results showed that:(1)the Internet environment could damage memory retrieval;(2)people tended to use the Internet to help memory retrieval;(3)people paid less cognitive effort in the Internet environment,which meant that the Internet might damage memory because of fewer cognitive efforts.Both the results of Study 1 and Study 2,from the memory processing level,discovered the Internet’s impairment on memory processing.In order to further clarify the internal mechanism of this influence,Study 3 examines the role of memory strategies in the above-mentioned effects from the meta-memory level(Experiment 3).The experiment set different Internet availability and different Internet encoding environments to examine the impact of the Internet on memory strategies.The results showed that:(1)When the Internet was unavailable,the memory performance of the Internet environment encoding was significantly lower than that of the NoInternet encoding,which was reflected by the memory impairment effect;(2)When the Internet was available,the memory performance of the Internet environment encoding was significantly higher than that of the No-Internet encoding,which was reflected by the memory enhancement effect.This result indicated that different Internet availability would produce different memory strategies,resulting in different memory outcomes.In summary,the results of this paper showed that:(1)The Internet would cause memory impairment effects on memory encoding and memory retrieval through memory strategies;(2)The Internet’s memory impairment effect was due to people’s unwillingness to pay cognitive efforts;(3)Internet availability would regulate the impact of the Internet on memory,and the availability of the Internet would produce different memory results.The results of this paper thoroughly caught the causes and mechanisms of the Internet’s impact on memory and expanded the field of memory research in theory;in practice,it helped to stimulate people’s thinking about the use of emerging technologies,what cognitive results people used technology to bring out,and how people should use technological skills to better survival and adaptation to the environment.