Remembrance of things tagged: How tagging effort affects tag production and human memory

Abstract

We developed a low-effort interaction method called Click2Tag for social bookmarking. Information foraging theory predicts that the production of tags in will increase as the effort required to do so is lowered, while the amount of time invested decreases. However, models of human memory suggest that changes in the tagging process may affect subsequent human memory for the tagged material. We compared (1) low-effort tagging by mouse-clicking (Click2Tag), (2) traditional tagging by typing (type-to-tag), and (3) baseline, no tagging conditions. Our results suggest that (a) Click2Tag increases tagging rates, (b) Click2Tag improves recognition of facts from the tagged text when compared to type-to-tag, and (c) Click2Tag is comparable to the no-tagging baseline condition on recall measures. Results suggest that tagging by clicking strengthens the memory traces by repeated readings of relevant words in the text and, thus, improves recognition.