Poster #20 - Children Benefit from Compelled Use of an Inefficient Cognitive Offloading Strategy

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

People have long been concerned about the effects of “cognitive offloading” on raw human cognition and behaviour. The ancient philosopher Socrates worried that if people learned to write, it would “implant forgetfulness in their souls”, as internal memory processing would be replaced by “means of external marks”. Similarly, modern parents and teachers often worry that children’s decision-making skills will be harmed by the ubiquitous incorporation of external thinking tools (e.g., calculators, smartphones, and tablets) into problem solving. As yet, however, there has been limited basic research on the effects of cognitive offloading on children’s subsequent behavioural choices.

One recent study (Scarampi & Gilbert, 2020) observed a link between adults’ past experience with offloading memory demands and their subsequent choices to offload such demands. Consistent with the classic Einstellung effect (Luchins, 1942), participants who were initially compelled to use an external reminder-setting strategy continued to use this strategy even when their internal memory capacities were sufficient. Here, we explored whether compelling 6- to 9-year-old children (N = 128) to deploy an inefficient offloading strategy would likewise bias their subsequent decisions to offload.

As in Armitage, Bulley, and Redshaw (2020), children counted stick figures that varied on two dimensions: they had a blue or red face, and their arms were pointed up or down (see Figure 1). The figures were always presented in an inverted orientation on a rotatable turntable, and on separate trials children counted either (i) blue figures (which are just as easy to count when inverted or upright), or (ii) figures with their arms up (which are harder to count when inverted because the arms must be mentally rotated). Critically, in phase 1, half of the children were told to indiscriminately rotate the turntable before counting on every trial, and the other half had to complete the task without rotating the turntable at all. In phase 2, all children repeated the task and were explicitly given the choice to rotate the turntable or not. Here, the most efficient strategy was to rotate the turntable selectively—when counting upright arms but not when counting blue faces—and the Einstellung effect would predict that children who were compelled to rotate indiscriminately in phase 1 would be less selective in their offloading choices in phase 2.

Intriguingly, older children showed the opposite effect. Among 6- and 7-year-olds, there was no link between past experience with offloading and selectivity in phase 2, χ2 (1,445) = 0.18, p = .671. Among 8- and 9-year-olds, however, children who were compelled to rotate indiscriminately in phase 1 were significantly more selective in their offloading in phase 2 than those without offloading experience, χ2 (1,445) = 7.74, p = .005 (see Figure 2). Promisingly, both younger and older children who were compelled to offload in phase 1 showed no sign of increased redundancy when using the turntable in phase 2 (i.e., when counting blue faces). This study provides preliminary evidence that children may derive benefits, rather than harms, from exposure to inefficient cognitive offloading strategies.

Authors

• Jonathan Redshaw, University of Queensland
  Presenting Author

• Kristy Louise Armitage, University of Queensland