Syntes: Risko & Gilbert (2016) — cognitive offloading: why we offload, and what it costs memory

Källa: Risko, E. F.; Gilbert, S. J. (2016 (Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20(9), 676–688)). Cognitive Offloading. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002

Verified content (full text read 2026-10-11, UCL accepted manuscript)

• Definition: cognitive offloading is "the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand" (e.g. reminders, writing things down, tilting the head).
• Triggers: decisions to offload depend on metacognitive confidence as well as actual ability; people offload even when it gives no objective benefit (in a short-term memory task, about 40 % offloading at a two-item load where performance was already at ceiling, with the false belief that it would help).
• Consequences: offloaded information can be less well remembered when the store is unavailable (expecting information to be saved lowered recall in the transactive-memory studies cited), with gains in remembering where to find it; saving one list can improve memory for a second list (less interference); using internet search can inflate people's sense of what they know.
• Education: "any benefit of offloading will be contingent on the fact that the demand being offloaded is unnecessary with respect to the learning goal", and what is saved must be redistributed productively.

Why it is in the library

Adjacent (cognitive science): the general framework for the AI question. It states C2's mechanism in a testable form: offloading helps when the offloaded work is not the work that produces learning, and harms when it is. The primary studies it cites (e.g. Sparrow et al. 2011 on "Google effects") are not in the library and have not been checked for replication here.