Outsourcing memory to the external environment: Cognitive offloading, value-based decision making, and metacognition

This talk will summarise a line of experimental work, both laboratory-based and naturalistic, investigating how people use external tools and reminders to help them remember.

Key questions are:

1. how do people decide between storing information in internal memory or external reminders;
2. how does this process change across the lifespan;
3. how does it relate to underlying brain activity;
4. what are the downstream consequences for memory?

I will argue that cognitive offloading is experimentally tractable and guided by metacognitive processes. Computational modelling suggests that it can also be seen as a form of value-based decision making. These results suggest real-world interventions that could improve people’s adaptive use of cognitive tools.

Click here to participate online.

Prof. Sam Gilbert is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL