Differences between children and young adults in the effects of difficulty and value of learning items on cognitive offloading strategies

Cognitive offloading refers to the use of external tools to assist in memory processes.This study investigates the effects of item difficulty and value on cognitive offloading during a word-pair learning task, comparing children and young adults in a context where both cues coexist. In Experiment 1, we examined the impact of difficulty and value cues on cognitive offloading using a 2 (difficulty: easy vs. difficult) × 2 (value: high vs. low) × 2 (age group: children vs. young adults) mixed design.The results indicated that young adults accounted for both difficulty and value cues in their cognitive offloading strategies, in contrast to children, who relied only on difficulty cues. In Experiment 2, we retained the experimental design of Experiment 1, with one notable change: difficulty and value cues were simultaneously displayed on the same interface. This change aimed to reduce working memory load, thereby helping children better perceive the value cues. Our results showed that when value and difficulty cues were presented on the same interface, children took both cues into account in their cognitive offloading decisions. In contrast, young adults were more influenced by the value of the learning items when adopting cognitive offloading strategies. We conducted an exploratory analysis to examine the impact of serial position on offloading decisions. The results showed that children were more likely to use cognitive offloading strategies for items from the early and middle positions than for those from the later positions. In contrast, young adults (as observed in Experiment 2) tended to use cognitive offloading strategies for items from the middle positions. Our findings suggest that age affects the utilization of cues in the strategies of cognitive offloading. We interpreted the observed differences in cognitive offloading strategies through the lens of developmental changes in metacognitive abilities.