The effect of external store reliance on actual and predicted value-directed remembering

Less Than Zero?

Not all information encountered is equally important to remember. Some information may be valuable, while others may be irrelevant. Importantly, retrieving and acting upon some information may even have negative consequences. Research has shown that information associated with negative consequences when retrieved is remembered worse than information associated with positive consequences when retrieved. The current experiments address a hitherto understudied aspect of memory for values, namely about how neutral and negative valued information is remembered and which processes underly the encoding and retrieval of this information. Across four experiments, we presented participants with words and an associated positive, neutral, or negative point value. Participants thought the associated values would be added to their total score, thus incentivizing the recall of positive value words and forgetting of negative value words. However, at retrieval participants were told to ignore previously associated values and to try to retrieve as many words from the study phase as possible. Replicating previous research, we found superior retrieval for words associated with positive compared to negative values. More importantly for the current investigation, across four experiments, we found no evidence that words associated with negative values were remembered worse than words associated with a neutral value.

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.

Responsible remembering: The role of metacognition, forgetting, attention, and retrieval in adaptive memory

In our everyday lives, we must remember important information, especially if there are consequences for forgetting. In this review, I discuss recent work on responsible remembering: the strategic and effortful prioritization of important information with consequences for forgetting. Thus far, research regarding responsible remembering has revealed several key factors and mechanisms that work together to enhance memory for important information that will continue to be refined: the identification and selection of what to remember (metacognitive reflectivity), the forgetting of less important information to facilitate memory for items that do need to be remembered (responsible forgetting), the functional prioritization of attention at the expense of competing factors (responsible attention), and the selective recall of important information via efficient retrieval strategies (responsible retrieval). Together, these functions form a cohesive system that aims to selectively prioritize, encode, and recall information that is deemed important based on its anticipated utility or the consequences of forgetting, and considering the importance of information may be a critical memory adaptation as we age. Specifically, if younger and older adults learn to self-assess and prioritize important information that has negative consequences if forgotten, engage in strategic forgetting, efficiently allocate their attentional resources, and utilize effective retrieval operations, memory for said important information can be enhanced.

Does expecting external memory support cost recognition memory?

We often use tools and aids to help us achieve our cognitive goals - that is, we often offload to external supports. One such variety of offloading is the use of external memory stores (e.g., phones, computers, notebooks, calendars) to support memory. Recent work aimed at better understanding the consequences of offloading memory on aspects of unaided memory have revealed a clear cost to unaided memory performance when an external memory store is unexpectedly lost, but this work has focused on examining this cost in free-recall paradigms. Using key theoretical differences between recall and recognition, we sought to examine the influences of expecting external memory supports in a recognition memory context across five preregistered experiments, finding evidence for a small cost to unaided recognition memory. We found evidence for a specific cost in recollection (Experiments 2, 3a, and 3b). When testing the effects of expecting external memory support on indices of study effort, there was a reduction to study time which partially mediated the relation between expecting support and memory performance indices, consistent with earlier work using free recall. Individuals did not predict a cost to memory of losing expected support in recognition, contrasting earlier work using free recall.

The limited memory of value following value directed encoding

Items associated with higher values during encoding are later recognized and recalled better than are lower valued items. During recall paradigms, these value directed encoding (VDE) effects heavily depend upon learned strategies acquired during repeated testing with earnings feedback. However, because VDE effects also occur in single test recognition designs, precluding such learning, it has been suggested that high value may automatically induce good encoding. We tested this by manipulating encoding instructions (Experiments 1a and 1b) and manipulating concurrent levels of processing (LOP) requirements during encoding (Experiment 2a and 2b). Two main findings emerged. First, subject initiated strategies played a dominant role in VDE effects with little evidence for automaticity. This was demonstrated in Experiment 1 by a more than three-fold increase in the VDE recognition effect when instructions specifically encouraged selective elaboration of high-value items. It was also shown by the complete elimination of VDE recognition effects in Experiment 2 when LOP tasks were concurrently performed during encoding. Critically, the blocking of VDE effects occurred even though a catch trial procedure verified that value was being processed during encoding and remained even when subjects had unlimited time to process the materials during encoding. Second, the data showed, for the first time, that when subjects attempted to specify the value of recognized items, they heavily depended upon a recognition heuristic in which increases in recognition strength, even when nondiagnostic, were inferred to reflect high encoding value. The tendency for subjects to conflate recognition strength and value may have important implications for behavioral economics.

Does point value structure influence measures of memory selectivity?

ABSTRACTIn reward-based learning and value-directed remembering, many different value structures for the to-be-remembered information have been used by researchers. I was interested in whether different scoring structures used in a value-directed remembering task impact measures of memory selectivity. Participants studied lists of words paired with point values and some lists included words paired with values ranging from 1 to 20, 1 to 10 (repeating twice), either a high value (10 points) or a low value (1 point), and either a high value (10 points), a medium value (5 points) or a low value (1 point). Results suggest that (1) in tests of free recall, if using a continuous value scale, the range of values matters in terms of selective memory, (2) analysing the selectivity index can yield different results than modelling item-level recall using point values (and the latter may be a preferable approach), (3) measures of selectivity using different value structures may lack construct validity when testing memory via recognition tests, and (4) the effect of value on memory is much larger on recall than recognition tests. Thus, I suggest that researchers carefully consider and justify the value structure used when examining selective memory for valuable information in list learning tasks.

Take a load off: examining partial and complete cognitive offloading of medication information

Although cognitive offloading, or the use of physical action to reduce internal cognitive demands, is a commonly used strategy in everyday life, relatively little is known about the conditions that encourage offloading and the memorial consequences of different offloading strategies for performance. Much of the extant work in this domain has focused on laboratory-based tasks consisting of word lists, letter strings, or numerical stimuli and thus makes little contact with real-world scenarios under which engaging in cognitive offloading might be likely. Accordingly, the current work examines offloading choice behavior and potential benefits afforded by offloading health-related information. Experiment 1 tests for internal memory performance for different pieces of missing medication interaction information. Experiment 2 tests internal memory and offloading under full offloading and partial offloading instructions for interaction outcomes that are relatively low severity (e.g., sweating). Experiment 3 extends Experiment 2 by testing offloading behavior and benefit in low-severity, medium-severity (e.g., backache), and high-severity interaction outcomes (e.g., heart attack). Here, we aimed to elucidate the potential benefits afforded by partial offloading and to examine whether there appears to be a preference for choosing to offload (i) difficult-to-remember information across outcomes that vary in severity, as well as (ii) information from more severe interaction outcomes. Results suggest that partial offloading benefits performance compared to relying on internal memory alone, but full offloading is more beneficial to performance than partial offloading.