The Cognitive Integration of E-Memory

Answers at your fingertips: Access to the Internet influences willingness to answer questions

“…For example, some have argued that constant connectivity to the Internet makes people less likely to engage critically with content found online, and more likely to rely on a surface level interpretation of the information sought (Carr, 2008). Others are less skeptical, suggesting that while reliance on the massive amount of E-memory afforded by the Internet is likely, such reliance does not necessarily preclude individuals from incorporating the information found online into their organic memory (Clowes, 2013; see also Michaelian & Sutton, 2013). In the present investigation we examine whether having a wealth of information ''at our fingertips" via the Internet can influence the very metacognitive processes (i.e., metacognitive monitoring and control) we use to govern our decisions about what we ''know" and ''don't know."…”

Social intelligence: How to integrate research? A mechanistic perspective

“…E-Memory is a new cognitive artifact that effectively enhances human capacities for remembering, by being similar to natural (biological) memory; it is defined by Clowes (2013) as "a heterogeneous bunch of devices and systems which fulfill similar functions either by replacement, extension or augmentation". In psychological terms, E-Memory systems are explicit, long-term storage systems.…”

Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: a task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition

“…(Clark and Chalmers 1998, pp. 12-13) The moral of the story, if Clark and Chalmers are right, is that, contra the traditional intracranialist view, cognition is not ''brainbound'' [as Clark has subsequently put it (Clark 2008)]: when Otto looks up the museum's address in the notebook, the situation is best described not as an individual cognitive agent retrieving information from an external store, but rather as a single, extended cognitive system retrieving information from an internal store, in a manner that is functionally indistinguishable from that in which a human agent with a normal memory, such as Inga, retrieves information from her internal (biological) memory (Clowes 2013). In other words: cognition ''ain't (all) in the head'' (Clark and Chalmers 1998, p. 8): the process of remembering loops out into the world, running from Otto's brain through the notebook and back again.…”