Cognitive Offloading

Physical action is sometimes used to reduce the cognitive demands of a task. This is known as cognitive offloading. Recent studies have begun to investigate the processes that trigger cognitive offloading, and the cognitive consequences of this behavior. Propensity to offload cognition is influenced by the internal cognitive demands that would otherwise be necessary. It is also influenced by metacognitive evaluations of our mental abilities. These metacognitive evaluations are potentially erroneous, which may lead to suboptimal offloading behavior. If you have ever tilted your head to perceive a rotated image, or programmed a smartphone to remind you of an upcoming appointment, you have engaged in cognitive offloading: the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand. Despite the ubiquity of this type of behavior, it has only recently become the target of systematic investigation in and of itself. We review research from several domains that focuses on two main questions: (i) what mechanisms trigger cognitive offloading, and (ii) what are the cognitive consequences of this behavior? We offer a novel metacognitive framework that integrates results from diverse domains and suggests avenues for future research. If you have ever tilted your head to perceive a rotated image, or programmed a smartphone to remind you of an upcoming appointment, you have engaged in cognitive offloading: the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand. Despite the ubiquity of this type of behavior, it has only recently become the target of systematic investigation in and of itself. We review research from several domains that focuses on two main questions: (i) what mechanisms trigger cognitive offloading, and (ii) what are the cognitive consequences of this behavior? We offer a novel metacognitive framework that integrates results from diverse domains and suggests avenues for future research. the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand. the use of physical action (e.g., head tilt) to align a stimulus with a representation stored in memory. predictions made by an individual about whether they will be able to retrieve specific information. creation of a cue in the external environment to trigger a delayed intention. use of an internal transformation (i.e., mental rotation) to align an internal representation of a stimulus with a representation stored in memory. higher-order thinking, or ‘thinking about thinking’, to enable evaluation and control of one's mental processes. a reaction-time task involving conflict between two stimulus dimensions (e.g., the color and meaning of word stimuli) a memory system composed of a group that collectively encodes, stores, and retrieves knowledge.