Optimal cognitive offloading: Increased reminder usage but reduced proreminder bias in older adults.

Abstract

Research into prospective memory suggests that older adults may face particular difficulties remembering delayed intentions. One way to mitigate these difficulties is by using external reminders but relatively little is known about age-related differences in such cognitive offloading strategies. We examined younger and older adults’ (N = 88) performance on a memory task where they chose between remembering delayed intentions with internal memory (earning maximum reward per item) or external reminders (earning a reduced reward). This allowed us to distinguish (a) the absolute number of reminders used versus (b) the proreminder or antireminder bias, compared with each individual’s optimal strategy. Older adults used more reminders overall, as might be expected, because they also had poorer memory performance. However, when compared against the optimal strategy weighing the costs versus benefits of reminders, it was only the younger adults who had a proreminder bias. Younger adults overestimated the benefit of reminders, whereas older adults underestimated it. Therefore, even when aging is associated with increased use of external memory aids overall, it can also be associated with reduced preference for external memory support, relative to the objective need for such support. This age-related difference may be driven at least in part by metacognitive processes, suggesting that metacognitive interventions could lead to improved use of cognitive tools.

Reminders Eliminate Age-Related Declines in Prospective Memory

“…Interestingly, metacognitive judgments revealed that older (but not younger) adults were overconfident in their ability to complete the task without reminders, which may explain why they did not use reminders more frequently when given the option. Using a similar procedure, Tsai et al (2023) also found that older adults used reminders less frequently than is optimal based on their own internal memory abilities.…”

“…showed that older adults were overconfident in their ability to complete the task under high load without reminders. From a metacognitive viewpoint of PM offloading, overconfidence by older adults should have resulted in less frequent reminder checking when given the opportunity (Tsai et al, 2023). Notably, Scarampi and Gilbert (2020) found that older adults were also overconfident in their unaided memory ability under high load using the intention offloading task, yet older adults did not use reminders more often to compensate for poorer unaided memory ability when given the option.…”

“…For clarity, metacognitive monitoring (e.g., performance predictions) refers to the assessing the progress of learning while metacognitive control (e.g., decisions to offload) refers to the selecting of strategies to regulate performance (Nelson & Narens, 1990). Importantly, these studies were either conducted prior to any theoretical development of the mechanisms underlying PM (i.e., Einstein & McDaniel, 1990) or using nontraditional paradigms in which the theoretical mechanisms underlying performance have not been well-characterized (i.e., Henry et al, 2012;Scarampi & Gilbert, 2020;Tsai et al, 2023). Thus, it is not entirely clear how reminders serve to influence performance and when older adults may or may not strategically compensate for performance.…”

“…However, there remains a paucity of existing laboratory-based studies on offloading. Future research aimed at understanding optimal offloading decisions (e.g., Tsai et al, 2023) and where age-related breakdowns in these decisions occur (e.g., encoding, maintenance, and/or retrieval) will increase the ability to design effective interventions to use offloading as a strategy to improve memory.…”

Influence of the physical effort of reminder-setting on strategic offloading of delayed intentions

“…Cognitive offloading strategies are influenced by metacognitive judgements (i.e. people tend to set reminders when they think that they will otherwise forget, not necessarily when they will actually forget; Boldt & Gilbert, 2019, 2022; Gilbert, 2015b; Gilbert et al, 2020) and are associated with age-related change (Bulley et al, 2020; Redshaw et al, 2018; Scarampi & Gilbert, 2021; Tsai et al, 2023). For a review of these findings, see Gilbert et al (2023).…”