On retrieving information from external knowledge stores: Feeling-of-findability, feeling-of-knowing and Internet search

Google effects on memory: a meta-analytical review of the media effects of intensive Internet search behavior

People are increasingly using the web for fact-checking and other forms of information seeking. The "Google effects" refers to the idea that individuals rely on the Internet as a source of knowledge rather than remembering it for themselves. However, few literature review have yet comprehensively examined the media effects of this intensive Internet search behavior. In this study, by carrying out meta-analysis, we found that google effects is closely associated with cognitive load, behavioral phenotype and cognitive self-esteem. And this phenomenon is also more likely to happen while using a mobile phone to browse the Internet rather than a computer. People with a larger knowledge base are less susceptible to the consequences of Internet use than those with a smaller knowledge base. The media effect was stronger for persons who had used the Internet before than for those who had not. And meta-analyses show that participants in North America (parameter = -1.0365, 95%CI = [-1.8758, -0.1972], p < 0.05) are more susceptible to frequent Internet search behavior relative to other regions. Overall, google effects on memory challenges the way individuals seek and read information, and it may lead to changes in cognitive and memory mechanisms.

Connected Creativity

Abstract. With more than 60% of the world’s population online, how does our rapidly evolving digital world impact creative processes and outcomes? On the one hand, there is the promise of the shared knowledge and ideas of humanity, readily available at our fingertips, providing numerous starting points from which to develop new ideas. On the other hand, we may be overwhelmed by the volume of information, struggle to find and identify quality information to form the basis of a creative thinking process, and instead fall back on common, accepted ideas. Throughout this article, we place creators and creating in the ubiquitous situated context of searching the World Wide Web (i.e., the Web) and consider the implications for a range of everyday creative thinking processes. Research in this area is surprisingly limited, and a number of suggestions are made to take this area forward as the Web becomes an ever-expanding part of our cognitive ecology.

Constraints and Affordances of Online Engagement With Scientific Information-A Literature Review

Many urgent problems that societies currently face—from climate change to a global pandemic—require citizens to engage with scientific information as members of democratic societies as well as to solve problems in their personal lives. Most often, to solve their epistemic aims (aims directed at achieving knowledge and understanding) regarding such socio-scientific issues, individuals search for information online, where there exists a multitude of possibly relevant and highly interconnected sources of different perspectives, sometimes providing conflicting information. The paper provides a review of the literature aimed at identifying (a) constraints and affordances that scientific knowledge and the online information environment entail and (b) individuals' cognitive and motivational processes that have been found to hinder, or conversely, support practices of engagement (such as critical information evaluation or two-sided dialogue). Doing this, a conceptual framework for understanding and fostering what we call online engagement with scientific information is introduced, which is conceived as consisting of individual engagement (engaging on one's own in the search, selection, evaluation, and integration of information) and dialogic engagement (engaging in discourse with others to interpret, articulate and critically examine scientific information). In turn, this paper identifies individual and contextual conditions for individuals' goal-directed and effortful online engagement with scientific information.

Using confidence and consensuality to predict time invested in problem solving and in real-life web searching

Understanding processes that lead people to invest a certain amount of time in challenging tasks is important for theory and practice. In particular, researchers often assume strong linear associations between confidence, consensuality (the degree to which an answer is independently given by multiple participants), and response time. The Diminishing Criterion Model (DCM; Ackerman, 2014) is a metacognitive model which explains the stopping rules people employ under uncertainty in terms of the confidence-time association. This model is unique in predicting a curvilinear rather than a linear confidence-time association. Using consensuality as an alternative to confidence for predicting response time offers theoretical and practical opportunities. In four experiments, including replications and variations, we examined confidence (where collected) and consensuality as predictors of the time people invest in three problem-solving tasks and in real-life web searching. The results using consensuality, like those for confidence, fitted the curvilinear time pattern predicted by the DCM, with one exception: at least 30% of the population must endorse a potential answer for consensuality to predict response time based on the stopping rules in the DCM. Beyond examining consensuality as a predictor, the study brings converging evidence supporting the DCM's curvilinear confidence-time association over alternative models. The methodology used for analyzing web searching offers new directions for metacognitive research in naturally-performed tasks.

An initial accuracy focus prevents illusory truth

News stories, advertising campaigns, and political propaganda often repeat misleading claims, increasing their persuasive power. Repeated statements feel easier to process, and thus truer, than new ones. Surprisingly, this illusory truth effect occurs even when claims contradict young adults' stored knowledge (e.g., repeating The fastest land animal is the leopard makes it more believable). In four experiments, we tackled this problem by prompting people to behave like "fact checkers." Focusing on accuracy at exposure (giving initial truth ratings) wiped out the illusion later, but only when participants held relevant knowledge. This selective benefit persisted over a delay. Our findings inform theories of how people evaluate truth and suggest practical strategies for coping in a "post-truth world."

Offloading memory leaves us vulnerable to memory manipulation

We often offload memory demands onto external artefacts (e.g., smartphones). While this practice allows us to subvert the limitations of our biological memory, storing memories externally exposes them to manipulation. To examine the impact of such manipulation, we report three experiments, two of which were pre-registered. Individuals performed a memory task where they could offload to-be-recalled information to an external store and on a critical trial, we surreptitiously manipulated the information in that store. Results demonstrated that individuals rarely noticed this manipulation. In addition, when individuals had information inserted into their external memory stores, they often encoded it into their biological memory, thereby leading to the creation of a false memory. The reported results highlight one of the cognitive consequences of offloading our memory to external artefacts.