Storing information in-the-world: Metacognition and cognitive offloading in a short-term memory task

“Human cognition often involves, as an integral part, the manipulation of the body and/or physical/social environment (e.g., Barrett, 2011; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Hutchins, 1995; Kirsh & Maglio, 1994; Pfeifer & Bongard, 2006; Zhang & Norman, 1994).”

“Human cognition often involves, as an integral part, the manipulation of the body and/or physical/social environment (e.g., Barrett, 2011; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Hutchins, 1995; Kirsh & Maglio, 1994; Pfeifer & Bongard, 2006; Zhang & Norman, 1994).”

“With respect to the memorial consequences of offloading, Sparrow et al. (2011) demonstrated that participants who typed to-be-remembered information into a computer that they expected would save the information remembered less than individuals who typed to-be-remembered information into a computer…”

“Human cognition often involves, as an integral part, the manipulation of the body and/or physical/social environment (e.g., Barrett, 2011; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Hutchins, 1995; Kirsh & Maglio, 1994; Pfeifer & Bongard, 2006; Zhang & Norman, 1994).”

“Human cognition often involves, as an integral part, the manipulation of the body and/or physical/social environment (e.g., Barrett, 2011; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Hutchins, 1995; Kirsh & Maglio, 1994; Pfeifer & Bongard, 2006; Zhang & Norman, 1994).”

“…difficulty or value on cognitive offloading strategies (Arreola et al., 2019; Gilbert, 2024; Hu et al., 2019; Murphy, 2023; Murphy & Castel, 2023; Risko & Dunn, 2015; Skulmowski, 2023), it remains unclear how young adults allocate their offloading strategies when both factors coexist in a…”

“…the crucial role of metacognition in determining cognitive offloading strategies (Gilbert et al., 2020; Gilbert, 2015a, 2015b; Hu et al., 2019; Risko & Dunn, 2015), finding that people’s decision to set a reminder is influenced by their beliefs about whether they will remember, which may not…”

“In many cases, these strategies are supported by research for offloading information (temporarily storing) onto paper in diagrams to ease the burden on working memory in these challenging situations (Hord & Bouck, 2012; Risko and Dunn, 2015).”

“Similarly, the deployment of external strategies for memorizing verbal information (Morrison & Rich-mond, 2020) or future intentions (Meyerhoff et al., 2021; Risko & Dunn, 2015), such as writing something down or placing reminders when given the choice, also varied between individuals.”

“…in the physical environment to achieve such feats has been the predominant focus of the cognitive off-loading literature to date (e.g., Armitage et al., 2020; Gilbert et al., 2020; Meyerhoff et al., 2021; Risko & Dunn, 2015; Risko et al., 2014; Scarampi & Gilbert, 2021; Weis & Wiese, 2019a, 2019b).”

“…lower levels of working memory functioning are to some extent associated with increased reliance on the external world (Meyerhoff et al., 2021; Morrison & Richmond, 2020; Risko & Dunn, 2015), there is no robust linear relationship between memory capacity and sampling behavior (Böing et al., 2023).”

“Neurally, previous functional neuroimaging research has highlighted the role of the rostral prefrontal cortex (rPFC) in maintaining delayed intentions, with the medial and lateral rPFC serving dissociable functions in this process 1,3,22–24 .”

“In the research Storing information in-the-world: Metacognition and cognitive offloading in a short-term memory task (Risko et al., 2015), the authors investigated motifs that influence the decision of storing the information in exter-nal versus internal format (in memory), using a variant of a…”

“As shown in Risko and Dunn (2015), a learner can obtain additional working memory capacity by allocating necessary cognitive processes to the outside environment, actively processing information, and more effectively integrating the processed information.”

“The use of external devices such as calendars and tracking applications could help relieve the cognitive resources and the reliance on attentional resources it takes for planning and remembering extensive information (e.g., Risko & Dunn, 2015).”

“For example, Risko and Dunn (2015) reported that in a short-term memory task when given the option of writing down to-be-remembered information participants did so almost 50% of the time when only two letters had to be remembered, which is well below most individuals’ capacity.”

“Intention or cognitive offloading refers to the use of external aids to reduce the cognitive load associated with processing and retaining information [46,47].”

“Indeed, participants with higher working memory capacity relied less on cognitive offloading, when given the option (Risko and Dunn 2015).”

“Following Risko and Dunn (2015), we suggest this requires human-machine systems must “adap-tively integrate internal with external processes [to be] a successful cognitive agent in a complex environment” (p. 61).”

“Specifically, while previous studies have reported negative correlations between FOJs and the selection of cognitive offloading [1, 15–18], we found that SOJs monitor and control such associations.”

“…and the critical trials suggest that participants might not be relying heavily on the external store, especially compared to behavior in a recall context (e.g., Kelly & Risko, 2019a, 2019b, 2022a, 2022b; Lu et al., 2020, 2022; Morrison & Richmond, 2020; Park et al., 2022; Risko & Dunn, 2015).”

“Fortunately, humans were shown to frequently (e.g., Gilbert, 2015; Gray et al., 2006; Siegler & Lemaire, 1997; Walsh & Anderson, 2009; Weis & Wiese, 2019a), though not always (e.g., Risko & Dunn, 2015; Touron, 2015), make adaptive choices regarding such performance-related CS properties.”

“Nevertheless, participants were shown to use memory instead of pen and paper for the sets of 10 letters more than 10% of the time, which nearly always leads to wrong answers (Risko & Dunn, 2015).”

“…that they encode into memory (Böing et al., 2023; Draschkow et al., 2021; Droll et al., 2005; Hayhoe et al., 2003; Hoogerbrugge et al., 2023; Koevoet et al., 2023a; Melnik et al., 2018; Risko & Dunn, 2015; Risko & Gilbert, 2016; Sahakian et al., 2023; Somai et al., 2020; Tri-esch et al., 2003).”

“The metacognitive view suggests that participants offload in situations in which they have low confidence in their own internal memory ability (Dunn & Risko, 2016; Gilbert et al., 2020; Risko & Dunn, 2015).”

“…but it is mostly focused on memory tools (e.g., Boldt & Gilbert, 2019; Storm & Stone, 2015; Sparrow et al., 2011; Morrison & Richmond, 2020; Burnett & Richmond, 2023), particularly on short-term memory (Risko & Dunn, 2015), mental rotation (Chu & Kita, 2011), and learning (Costa et al., 2011).”

“…that individuals typically opt to encode information to external storage when given the opportunity – even when it is nonoptimal, inconvenient, and when ceiling performance is possible without offloading (Ferguson et al., 2015; Gilbert et al., 2020; Risko & Dunn., 2015; Storm et al., 2017).”

“Therefore, the relevant question is not whether the user delegates, but what exactly is delegated, under what conditions, and with what effects on metacognitive control (Dunn & Risko, 2016; Guo & Ye, 2026; Ngai & Gilbert, 2026; Risko & Dunn, 2015; Risko & Gilbert, 2016).”

“…等, 2018)。表象和知觉共享着相似的表征，但表象的编码方式比知觉更抽象 (李筱梅, 李海峰, 2018)。一种通道的真实感官体验(actual sensory experience)可能引发另一种或多种感官表象(sen sory mental imagery)(Elder & Krishna, 2022)。“望梅止渴”现象就是视觉体验激活味觉表象体验的例子。 拍摄及回顾照片等行为使人们更多关注视觉线索；而视觉线索可能会激活视觉表象并引发嗅觉和味觉 等其他感官表象体验。例如，观看享乐食品的照片会刺激味觉、嗅觉等感官表象体验，诱发消费者的 享用欲望(Elder &…”

“…(e.g., rehearsal effects, Stone & Zwolinski, 2022; Vasquez et al., 2024; Wang et al., 2017; functions, Stone et al., 2022; Bluck et al., 2005; offloading, Risko & Dunn, 2015; Storm & Stone, 2015; see also Eliseev & Marsh, 2021; Marsh & Rajaram, 2019; Stone & Wang, 2019; Storm & Soares, 2022).”

“Each evolutionary experiment was replicated 20 times starting from different randomly generated initial populations.”

“Additionally, looking at both our results and the results of studies looking at more granular decision-making, we concur with Racat et al. (2023) that a major direction for future research is looking at ability to “offload”, a concept from cognitive psychology (Risko and Dunn 2015).”

“…supporting saving-enhanced memory is proportional to the extent to which to-be-saved information is encoded internally prior to being saved, at least in a way that requires the involvement of cognitive resources for that information to be maintained (Morrison & Richmond, 2020; Risko & Dunn, 2015).”

“…to offload cognition are predicted by subjective confidence in their own abilities (Boldt & Gilbert, 2019; Gilbert et al., 2023; Hu et al., 2019; Risko & Dunn, 2015; Risko & Gilbert, 2016; Sachdeva & Gilbert, 2020), even after controlling for objective ability or in contexts where subjective…”

“…research has shown that individuals who believe that they can remember targets in learning tasks rely less on cognitive offloading than those who believe that they cannot [2, 10, 16, 18, 23, 25], suggesting that they base their selection of cognitive offloading on their metacognitive judgments.”

“Although Risko and Dunn [53] attempted to distinguish between strategic offloading and non-strategic offloading, this classificatory framework is primarily based on outcome descriptions and lacks in-depth mechanistic explanations.”

“Previous work suggests that metacognitive judgements of memory ability can drive participants’ decisions to offload memory (Hu et al., 2019; Risko & Dunn, 2015; cf. Grinschgl, Meyerhoff, et al., 2021).”

“Yet decisions to offload are themselves metacognitive and can be based on inaccurate judgments of internal ability or external reliability (Risko & Dunn, 2015).”