Linda Henkel, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Fairfield University, will discuss her intriguing research on photography and memory, which has garnered world-wide attention, at 1:30 p.m., Thursday, April 10, at Fairfield University Bookstore, 1499 Post Road, Fairfield. This event, part of the University's Learning for a Lifetime program, is free and open to the public.

In research conducted with undergraduate students in the University's Bellarmine Museum of Art, Dr. Henkel found that museum-goers who took photos of works of art while walking around a museum had worse memory for the objects and for specific object details later.

"People so often whip out their cameras almost mindlessly to capture a moment, to the point that they are missing what is happening right in front of them," she said.

Dr. Henkel enlisted a team of psychology majors to conduct the study, which grew out of a conversation she had in the lab with Alyssa Accomando '12, of Beverly, Mass. Accomando, Chelsea Morales '13, of Enfield, Conn., and Andrea Teofilo '12, of Woodbridge, Conn., helped with the study.

The findings were published in the Dec. 5, 2013 issue of Psychological Science, a prestigious journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Since then, news of her research has been reported in media outlets in the United States, Africa, and across Australia, Europe and Asia.

Read the original report in Psychological Science: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/12/04/0956797613504438.full.pdf+html

For more information on this event, contact Elizabeth Hastings at ehastings@fairfield.edu or (203) 254-4000, ext. 2688.

Posted On: 04-01-2014 03:04 PM

Volume: 46 Number: 244