Outsourcing memory to the external environment: Cognitive offloading, value-based decision making, and metacognition

This talk will summarise a line of experimental work, both laboratory-based and naturalistic, investigating how people use external tools and reminders to help them remember.

Key questions are:

1. how do people decide between storing information in internal memory or external reminders;
2. how does this process change across the lifespan;
3. how does it relate to underlying brain activity;
4. what are the downstream consequences for memory?

I will argue that cognitive offloading is experimentally tractable and guided by metacognitive processes. Computational modelling suggests that it can also be seen as a form of value-based decision making. These results suggest real-world interventions that could improve people’s adaptive use of cognitive tools.

Click here to participate online.