#google effect
Senwitt pages tagged google effect — blog posts, answers, glossary terms, research, and more.
- blog
Memory practice for the AI era — active recall
What active recall is, why it matters more in the AI era than before, and a daily practice routine grounded in the Google-effect literature and the GPS-and-spatial-memory studies.
- blog
The Google effect and what it means for AI
The 2011 Sparrow et al. paper started the cognitive-offloading conversation in earnest. The 2024 meta-analysis sharpened the picture. The AI extension is the natural next step.
- blog
Transactive memory: when AI is the partner
Daniel Wegner's 1985 framework explained how long-term couples share a single memory system. In 2011, Sparrow et al. extended the frame to search engines. AI is the next layer.
- glossary
Digital amnesia
Digital amnesia is the popular-press term for the Google effect — forgetting information you know you can retrieve later via search or AI.
- glossary
The Google effect (digital amnesia)
The Google effect is the tendency to remember WHERE information can be found instead of WHAT the information is. First named in a 2011 Science paper by Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner.
- glossary
Transactive memory
Transactive memory is a 1985 cognitive-science concept describing how groups distribute remembering across multiple people, so that no individual needs to remember everything alone.
- answers
Is GPS making us bad at navigation?
Yes, for the people who use it heavily — UCL and UCSB research has documented measurable spatial-memory effects. Here is what the studies actually show, and what to do about it.
- route
Google effect & digital amnesia.
Full research-page treatment.
- route
GPS and spatial memory.
UCL + UCSB studies.