Watching porn may be fun for some people, but that does not mean that they actually remembered what they just watched. That is because sexual arousal can interfere with short-term memory, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Sex Research.

In a study conducted by graduate student Christian Laier, his professor, and a colleague at the University of Duisberg-Essen, the researchers asked 28 heterosexual German men who were, on average, 26 years old to look at a series of computer images. Half of them were pornographic, while the other half were nonsexual images containing pictures of people performing various activities, like laughing in a group, playing sports, or carrying a weapon.

The men were asked to touch a "yes" or "no" key to indicate whether the image that they had seen was the same as one that they had viewed four slides earlier. This task required use of their working memory, the part of the brain that is engaged in retaining information while also being engaged in completing a task. Working memory is important for intellectual tasks like problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making.

In general, the men were a lot less accurate when they needed to judge whether they had seen a pornographic image before compared to a non-sexual one. When viewing the non-sexual images, 80 percent of the time they were correct in determining whether they had seen it before. For the pornographic images, that number dropped to an average of 67 percent. That number dropped even further when the images sexually aroused them.

According to the study researchers, this may explain why some people with Internet porn addictions may have difficulty completing everyday tasks, "such as missing sleep and forgetting appointments, which are associated with negative life consequences".

Since the study was conducted on a small sampling of heterosexual men, it is unclear whether the results would hold true for gay men or for women. The researchers note that the study would need to be replicated to account for sexual attraction and gender.

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