Abstract
The ubiquitous availability of technological aids requires individuals to constantly decide between either externalizing cognitive processes into these aids (i.e. cognitive offloading) or relying on their own internal cognitive resources. With the present research, we investigated the influence of metacognitive beliefs on individuals’ offloading behavior in an experimental setup (N = 159). We manipulated participants’ metacognitive beliefs about their memory abilities by providing fake performance feedback: below-average feedback, above-average feedback, or no feedback (control-group). We then measured offloading behavior, using a pattern copying task in which participants copied a color pattern from a model window into a workspace window. While solving this task, participants could rely either more on an internal memory strategy or more on an offloading strategy. Fake performance feedback affected the participants’ metacognitive evaluations about their memory abilities (below-group < control-group < above-group). Although fake performance feedback did not affect actual offloading behavior, the participants receiving below-average performance feedback reported that they had relied more on an offloading strategy than those participants receiving above-average performance feedback. Furthermore, the participants in the below-group reported lower general memory abilities than the other groups at the end of the experiment. We conclude that while fake performance feedback strongly influenced metacognitive beliefs, this did not transfer into a change of strategy selection, thus not influencing offloading behavior. We propose to consider not only metacognitive beliefs but also metacognitive experiences as potential determinants of cognitive offloading.
Highlights
Today, with regard to the pervasive availability of technological aids such as smartphones or tablets, individuals can constantly decide between either externalizing cognitive processes into these aids by, for example, offloading a shopping list onto one’s smartphone or relying on their own internal cognitive processing by memorizing the shopping list instead
We were especially interested in the fourth pre-rating as it was provided immediately before the main task (Pattern Copy Task) measuring cognitive offloading
As expected, at the very first pre-rating before receiving any fake performance feedback, the participants did not differ in their metacognitive evaluations about their upcoming performance, but after receiving fake performance feedback three times, the below-average group indicated the lowest performance, whereas the above-average group indicated the highest performance, with the control group in the middle
Summary
With regard to the pervasive availability of technological aids such as smartphones or tablets, individuals can constantly decide between either externalizing cognitive processes into these aids by, for example, offloading a shopping list onto one’s smartphone or relying on their own internal cognitive processing by memorizing the shopping list instead. The externalization of cognitive processes into technological aids is known as cognitive offloading (Risko & Gilbert, 2016). Cognitive offloading allows for overcoming capacity limitations of internal cognitive processing such as in working memory (Risko & Gilbert, 2016). With regard to working memory, cognitive offloading avoids the internal encoding or actively holding of information that is present in the immediate environment (Wilson, 2002).
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