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Gepubliceerd in:

28-05-2024 | Research

Children’s metacognition and cognitive offloading in an immediate memory task

Auteurs: Catriona Iley, Srdan Medimorec

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 5/2024

Abstract

Cognitive offloading is used to supplement internal processing demands through external actions such as writing down information. While metacognition plays a critical role in adults’ cognitive offloading decisions, less is known about the relation between metacognition and cognitive offloading in children. Here, we introduced an immediate memory task to 11- to 12-year-olds under two conditions: no choice to offload and choice to offload. Participants made metacognitive judgements about their memory capacity, and the task performance components such as accuracy and effort. Our results revealed that recall accuracy of the to-be-remembered items increased in the choice condition. Interestingly, while there was a consensus amongst participants that they chose to offload to maximise accuracy and reduce effort, there was no relation between offloading behaviour and metacognitions about accuracy and effort. On the other hand, metacognition for memory capacity was related to offloading behaviour. We discuss the implications for further understanding of the relation between cognitive offloading and metacognition in children.

vorige artikel Retrieving autobiographical memories in autobiographical contexts: are age-related differences in narrated episodic specificity present outside of the laboratory?

volgende artikel Lifetime familiarity cue effects for autobiographical memory

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In the no choice condition, the proportion of recalled items decreased with an increase in set size (across all set pairs all ps < 0.001, ds > 0.91); in the choice condition the trend was similar for all pairs (ps < 0.006, ds > 0.51), but with no difference between the sets 6 and 8 (p = .302, d = 0.18).

Offloading did not result in 100% accuracy due to errors in the offloading process. Forty-five errors were made in total (6.81% of all offloading trials). The errors were coded into errors due to incorrect writing (57.78% of total errors), incorrect reading of the letters when reporting to the researcher (35.56% of total errors;

this result could be attributed to the instances where handwriting was not clear) and partial offloading (6.67% of total errors). However, there were 14 instances of partial offloading or writing incorrectly that did not lead to errors (2.12% of all choice trials; this result could potentially indicate that in some cases of (incorrect) offloading, participants might have relied on their memory instead).

Two participants also wrote down the number of letters to be heard in the choice condition.

Only one participant chose ‘other’, and they gave the reason, “I used paper and pen only on the 6 for some and 8 questions as they were more difficult for me”. As they used the word ‘difficult’ in their answer, it was recoded as option 2 (it reduced effort).

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Titel: Children’s metacognition and cognitive offloading in an immediate memory task
Auteurs: Catriona Iley
Srdan Medimorec
Publicatiedatum: 28-05-2024
Uitgeverij: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 5/2024
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-024-01978-1

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