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

Abstract

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.

The 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; and
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.

Bio

Sam Gilbert is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, based at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London.

I edit the Cognitive Neuroscience section of Oxford Open Neuroscience, a fully open-access neuroscience journal of Oxford University Press, covering all areas of neuroscience. We welcome submissions of empirical articles, reviews, and registered reports. Please contact me if you are interested in this.

Read a review paper summarising some of our recent work on cognitive offloading.