ArticleCognitive research: principles and implications2019
Confidence guides spontaneous cognitive offloading.
Article in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Between Alarms and Scheduling: The Effect of Cognitive Offloading on Prospective and Retrospective Memory.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Metacognitive training facilitates optimal cognitive offloading.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Not all cognitive offloading is equal: distinguishing dependent and autonomous offloading to generative AI.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Strategic reminder setting for time-based intentions: Influence of metacognition, delay length, and cue visibility.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Microstructural organization of superior longitudinal fasciculus and cingulum bundle support metacognition driven cognitive offloading.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Cost avoidance underlies decisions to use prospective memory reminders.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Optimal metacognitive decision strategies in signal detection theory.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Article
- Individual differences in prospective and retrospective memory offloading.Journal of memory and language · 2025Article
- Can you help me? Using others to offload cognition.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- The role of short-term memory, type of practice and metacognitive judgments in predicting cognitive offloading.Frontiers in cognition · 2025Article
- Information search under uncertainty across transdiagnostic psychopathology and healthy ageing.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Intention offloading: Domain-general versus task-specific confidence signals.Memory & cognition · 2024Article
- Influence of the physical effort of reminder-setting on strategic offloading of delayed intentions.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2024Article
- Age-related differences in memory when offloading important information.Psychology and aging · 2023Article
- Age-related decreases in global metacognition are independent of local metacognition and task performance.Cognition · 2023Article
- Take a load off: examining partial and complete cognitive offloading of medication information.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2023Article
- Outsourcing Memory to External Tools: A Review of 'Intention Offloading'.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023Review
- Framing cognitive offloading in terms of gains or losses: achieving a more optimal use of reminders.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Partially Overlapping Neural Correlates of Metacognitive Monitoring and Metacognitive Control.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCognitive offloading is the use of physical action to reduce the cognitive demands of a task. Everyday memory relies heavily on this practice; for example, when we write down to-be-remembered information or use diaries, alerts, and reminders to trigger delayed intentions. A key goal of recent research has been to investigate the processes that trigger cognitive offloading. This research has demonstrated that individuals decide whether or not to offload based on a potentially erroneous metacognitive evaluation of their mental abilities. Therefore, improving the accuracy of metacognitive evaluations may help to optimise offloading behaviour. However, previous studies typically measure participants' use of an explicitly instructed offloading strategy, in contrast to everyday life where offloading strategies must often be generated spontaneously.
resultsWe administered a computer-based task requiring participants to remember delayed intentions. One group of participants was explicitly instructed on a method for setting external reminders; another was not. The latter group spontaneously set reminders but did so less often than the instructed group. Offloading improved performance in both groups. Crucially, metacognition (confidence in unaided memory ability) guided both instructed and spontaneous offloading: Participants in both groups set more reminders when they were less confident (regardless of actual memory ability).
conclusionsThese results show that the link between metacognition and cognitive offloading holds even when offloading strategies need to be spontaneously generated. Thus, metacognitive interventions are potentially able to alter offloading behaviour, without requiring offloading strategies to be explicitly instructed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.