Cognitive Offloading Impairs Memory Accuracy in an Intention Offloading Task
Mon-HS3-Talk II-03
Presented by: Hauke S. Meyerhoff
Setting reminders has a beneficial impact on fulfilling delayed intentions. For instance, placing the garbage next to the front door might help us to bring the garbage outside the next time we leave the house. However, little is known about the consequences of offloading behavior on memory performance. The present experiment (N=384) addresses the question how offloading intentions affects memory performance for offloaded intentions. The participants performed an ongoing drag-and-drop task with images. For some of the images, the participants were required to fulfill a delayed intention (i.e., drag-and-drop to a different location). We manipulated whether the participants had to set reminders for the delayed intentions or whether they were not allowed to do so. In a subsequent memory test, we probed recognition accuracy for the handled images. We manipulated whether this memory test was announced before the main task or not. In line with previous research, setting reminders improved the accuracy in fulfilling delayed intentions. However, irrespective of the test announcement, memory accuracy was reduced for images for which associated intentions had been offloaded previously. Therefore, this experiment shows that offloading intentions might interfere with the formation of memory. As a consequence, offloading behavior should depend on situation dependent considerations about this trade-off between immediate task performance (benefits from offloading) and memory formation (suffers from offloading).
Keywords: cognitive offloading, delayed intentions, working memory, prospective memory