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

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.