Abstract:
In daily life, demanding cognitive activities may afford opportunities to “offload” aspects of tasks onto the external environment (e.g., by making a shopping or “to-do” list), a strategy referred to as cognitive offloading (Risko & Gilbert, 2016). Offloading reduces reliance on internal representations and processes, and can lead to improved performance in cognitively demanding tasks. While individuals of different ages may benefit from offloading cognitive demands, this strategy may be especially useful for older adults to compensate for age-related cognitive declines and better meet the demands of everyday life. During my talk, I will present what we have learned so far when examining younger and older adults’ offloading behavior (using reminders in a memory task), the effect of offloading on memory performance, and factors associated with the decision to offload.