Sam J Gilbert

Intention offloading involves using external reminders such as diaries, to-do lists, and digital alerts to help us remember delayed intentions. Recent studies have provided evidence for various cognitive and metacognitive factors that guide intention offloading, but little research has investigated the physical cost of reminder-setting itself. Here, we present two pre-registered experiments investigating how the cost of physical effort associated with reminder-setting influences strategic intention offloading under different levels of memory load. At all memory loads, reminder-setting was reduced when it was more effortful. The ability to set reminders allowed participants to compensate for the influence of memory load on accuracy in the low-effort condition; this effect was attenuated in the high-effort condition. In addition, there was evidence that participants with less confidence in their memory abilities were more likely to set reminders. Contrary to prediction, physical effort had the greatest effect on reminder-setting at intermediate memory loads. We speculate that the physical costs of reminder-setting might have the greatest impact when participants are uncertain about their strategy choice. These results demonstrate the importance of physical effort as one of the factors relevant to cost-benefit decision-making about cognitive offloading strategies.

Saving information onto external resources can improve memory for subsequent information—a phenomenon known as the saving‐enhanced memory effect. This article reports two preregistered online experiments investigating (A) whether this effect holds when to‐be‐remembered information is presented before the saved information and (B) whether people choose the most advantageous strategy when given free choice of which information to save. Participants studied two lists of words; test order and whether and which list was saved (and re‐presented again later) were manipulated. The saving‐enhanced memory effect was only found when the first list (List A) was saved and tested after the second list (List B). When free to choose which list to save, participants preferred to save List A, but only when it was recalled after List B—that is, when it benefited memory. These findings suggest boundary conditions for the saving‐enhanced memory effect and that people offload the most profitable information.