As a part of subjective assignment for academic writing- MOOC, this PPT on 'Google Effects' is being uploaded.

1. V A N I T H A D ’ S O U Z A
D C 6 C 2 A 3 A F 0 3 5 1 1 E 9 A B 3 8 B 5 5 4 9 A 3 9 A 2 4 1
A C A D E M I C W R I T I N G
M S C I I H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
N I R M A L A N I K E T A N C O L L E G E O F H O M E S C I E N C E ,
A F F I L I A T E D T O M U M B A I U N I V E R S I T Y
effect

2.  Is there any country with only one color in their flag?
Please Google it
 How many Phone numbers do you remember?
 Do you remember meaning of the word you searched?
For most of the answers we will do Google search.
Time to Ponder

3. Defination
 The Google effect is defined as our tendency to forget
information which can be promptly Googled.
(Betsy Sparrow, 2011)
 Also called as Digital Amnesia
 Kaspersky Lab has termed this phenomenon Digital
Amnesia: the experience of forgetting information
that you trust a digital device to store and remember
for you.

4. We now see a study on Google effect done by
Sparrow, B.; Liu, J.; Wegner, D. M. (August 5,
2011).

5. Aim:
To investigate the relationships between memory,
technology, and ease of access to information.

6. Method – Experiment 1
 Repeated measures design, tested with easy or
hard trivia questions.
 After the questions, modified Stroop task
including words related to technology
(Google/Yahoo) and brand names (Nike/ Target).
 Cognitive processing speeds were measured as
participants performed the Stroop task.

7. Result: Exp 1
 “Interestingly, the technology words caused more
cognitive interference, presumably because
participants paid more attention to Google than Nike
for example, and that slowed down their cognitive
processing as measured through the Stroop
task”(Sparrow, B.; Liu, J.; Wegner, D. M. (August 5,
2011).)

8. Experiment 2
 Using an independent samples design,
participants were asked to type some newly
learned trivia facts into a computer.
 Half of the participants were told the information
would be saved and could access it later, and half
were told the information would be lost.
 In each condition, half of the participants were
clearly asked to try and remember the
information they were typing.

9. Result Exp-2
 The results showed that participants who thought
they could get the information later did not recall it
as well as the group that thought the information
would be removed. Besides, the explicit instruction
to remember had no effect on rates of recall.

10. Experiment 3
 The procedure repeated as the experiment 2, a third
condition added, for which participants were told that the
information they typed would be saved into a particular
folder. After participants typed in each of the 30 trivia
statements they were shown one of the following three
messages on the screen:
 Your entry has been saved.
Your entry has been saved into the folder X.
Your entry has been erased.
The name of the folder X varied randomly, and was labeled
either: FACTS, DATA, INFO, NAMES, ITEMS, or POINTS.
 Participants then completed a recognition task in which
they were shown the 30 trivia statements, but half of them
were altered slightly. Participants were asked to make
judgments about each statement.

11. Result Exp 3
 Participants remembered the statements they
thought had been wipe away. They recalled the name
of the folder, rather than the information, where they
saved it.

12. Conclusion
 This effect is termed by the researcher as ‘Google
effect’ (Wilmer et al. 2017), also been called Digital
Amnesia. Since we know that we can get information
from the net we don’t make efforts to memories or
encode information to recall the information later.

13. Strength
 Signal that humans are depending on internet than
on their memory
 Proof that human memory processes are adapting
and changing in the digital age.

14. Limitation
 Only a narrow range of memory effects in relation to
digital technology is considered.

15. Tips
 to rebuild the brain, starve the brain
 Fast from technology once a month
 Memories important contact numbers
 Remember brain plasticity and allow it to stretch.

16. Feedback on AW
 The academic writing course was very helpful for my
studies and research work.
 Time and pace provided to complete the course was
also very relaxed.
 The course content was little repetitive towards the
end but it helped in reinforcing certain concepts of
AW.
 Thanks to the whole team of AW for all the
dedication and efforts.

17. Reference
 Sparrow, B.; Liu, J.; Wegner, D. M. (August 5,
2011). "Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive
Consequences of Having Information at Our
Fingertips" (PDF). Science. 333 (6043): 776–
778. doi:10.1126/science.1207745. PMID 21764755.
 https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/digital-
amnesia/
 https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/digital-amnesia/
 https://quizlet.com/298063105/sparrow-2011-
flash-cards/
 Academic writing – MOOCs