When and why we choose to offload information: Understanding the ongoing trade-off between internal memory storage and external sampling

Abstract

If your answer to one of the following questions is ‘yes’, you, among many other people, make use of the so-called principle ‘cognitive offloading’. Do you program appointments into your calendar? Or do you put your keys next to the door, so you don’t forget to bring them with you? These are all examples of cognitive offloading which can be described as the process of using external tools such as your calendar to help you remember information. If you don’t use it, all information needs to be remembered by your brain solely. Your memory has a limited capacity so the use of cognitive offloading in daily life can be very useful. In daily life, people are constantly making the decision to store information internally in their working memory or externally with the use of cognitive offloading. This decision can be seen as a cost-benefit analysis because individuals constantly need to weigh the benefit of using cognitive offloading against the cost of storing the information internally in their memory. In scientific research, the phenomenon of cognitive offloading is mostly investigated with the use of two tasks. The first task is the copying task, during this task individuals need to recreate a model. The individuals can make use of cognitive offloading by looking at the model more often to store new information in their memory. The other task is the intention offloading task, during which individuals need to put ten circles in a numerical sequence. However, some circles need to be dragged to other places on the screen. The individuals can make use of cognitive offloading during the task by setting reminders for the location of these ‘special’ circles. Several factors could influence the decision, that we constantly make during daily life, on where to store information. These factors could be task specific, such as increasing the cost attached to cognitive offloading during a task or increasing the amount of information that needs to be remembered (memory load). Other factors that could influence the decision differ between individuals, such as the capacity of their internal memory storage or the confidence that they have about their own memory performances. One other factor that could potentially have an effect is the cognitive effort that is attached to the act of remembering information. Individuals tend to avoid cognitive effort because of the limited capacity of their memory storage. Group differences such as age or patient groups could also have an effect on the decision to offload information or not. This review looked at studies that investigated the effects of these factors and thereby made several conclusions. First, increasing the cost of cognitive offloading made individuals offload less information. Furthermore, increasing the memory load, lower internal memory capacity, lower confidence in their memory, older age and memory deficits made individuals offload more information to external tools. These factors could therefore contribute to practical implications for designing tools and environments that influence individuals’ behaviour and support information processing and storage in daily life, such as note-taking apps, reminder systems, virtual assistants, and cognitive training software. These tools can be of particular importance for specific groups such as older adults and patients with memory deficits to help them stay independent.