Cognitive Offloading

How workload and availability of spatial reference shape eye movement coupling in visuospatial working memory

Eyes are active in memory recall and visual imagination, yet our grasp of the underlying qualities and factors of these internally coupled eye movements is limited. To explore this, we studied 50 participants, examining how workload, spatial reference availability, and imagined movement direction influence internal coupling of eye movements. We designed a visuospatial working memory task in which participants mentally moved a black patch along a path within a matrix and each trial involved one step along this path (presented via speakers: up, down, left, or right). We varied workload by adjusting matrix size (3 × 3 vs. 5 × 5), manipulated availability of a spatial frame of reference by presenting either a blank screen (requiring participants to rely solely on their mental representation of the matrix) or spatial reference in the form of an empty matrix, and contrasted active task performance to two control conditions involving only active or passive listening. Our findings show that eye movements consistently matched the imagined movement of the patch in the matrix, not driven solely by auditory or semantic cues. While workload influenced pupil diameter, perceived demand, and performance, it had no observable impact on internal coupling. The availability of spatial reference enhanced coupling of eye movements, leading more frequent, precise, and resilient saccades against noise and bias. The absence of workload effects on coupled saccades in our study, in combination with the relatively high degree of coupling observed even in the invisible matrix condition, indicates that eye movements align with shifts in attention across both visually and internally represented information. This suggests that coupled eye movements are not merely strategic efforts to reduce workload, but rather a natural response to where attention is directed.

Does using artificial intelligence assistance accelerate skill decay and hinder skill development without performers' awareness?

Artificial intelligence in the workplace is becoming increasingly common. These tools are sometimes used to aid users in performing their task, for example, when an artificial intelligence tool assists a radiologist in their search for abnormalities in radiographic images. The use of artificial intelligence brings a wealth of benefits, such as increasing the efficiency and efficacy of performance. However, little research has been conducted to determine how the use of artificial intelligence assistants might affect the user's cognitive skills. In this theoretical perspective, we discuss how artificial intelligence assistants might accelerate skill decay among experts and hinder skill acquisition among learners. Further, we discuss how AI assistants might also prevent experts and learners from recognizing these deleterious effects. We then discuss the types of questions: use-inspired basic cognitive researchers, applied researchers, and computer science researchers should seek to answer. We conclude that multidisciplinary research from use-inspired basic cognitive research, domain-specific applied research, and technical research (e.g., human factors research, computer science research) is needed to (a) understand these potential consequences, (b) design artificial intelligence systems to mitigate these impacts, and (c) develop training and use protocols to prevent negative impacts on users' cognitive skills. Only by answering these questions from multidisciplinary perspectives can we harness the benefits of artificial intelligence in the workplace while preventing negative impacts on users' cognitive skills.

Primacy Effects in Extended Cognitive Strategy Choice: Initial Speed Benefits Outweigh Later Speed Benefits

BACKGROUND

Human performers often recruit environment-based assistance to acquire or process information, such as relying on a smartphone app, a search engine, or a conversational agent. To make informed choices between several of such extended cognitive strategies, performers need to monitor the performance of these options.

OBJECTIVE

In the present study, we investigated whether participants monitor an extended cognitive strategy's performance-here, speed-more closely during initial as compared to later encounters.

METHODS

In three experiments, 737 participants were asked to first observe speed differences between two competing cognitive strategies-here, two competing algorithms that can obtain answers to trivia questions-and eventually choose between both strategies based on the observations.

RESULTS

Participants were sensitive to subtle speed differences and selected strategies accordingly. Most remarkably, even when participants performed identically with both strategies across all encounters, the strategy with superior speed in the initial encounters was preferred. Worded differently, participants exhibited a technology-use primacy effect. Contrarily, evidence for a recency effect was weak at best.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that great care is required when performers are first acquainted with novel ways to acquire or process information. Superior initial performance has the potential to desensitize the performer for inferior later performance and thus prohibit optimal choice.

APPLICATION

Awareness of primacy enables users and designers of extended cognitive strategies to actively remediate suboptimal behavior originating in early monitoring episodes.

Self-reported strategy use and prospective memory: The roles of cue focality and task importance

Interest in the metacognitive aspects of prospective memory (PM) is growing. Yet, the interplay between participants' metacognitive awareness of PM task demands and features that contribute to successful PM require further attention. To this aim, participants in the current study completed laboratory-based PM tasks of varying difficulty (cue focality: focal, nonfocal-category, or nonfocal-syllable) and reported their strategy use and perceptions of PM task importance. Most participants reported using a strategy regardless of cue focality. However, only under the most challenging condition (i.e., nonfocal-syllable) did participants who reported using a strategy exhibit better PM performance compared to those who did not use a strategy. Additionally, strategy use and cue focality were independently associated with greater costs to ongoing task performance: strategy users exhibited greater slowing relative to individuals who did not use a strategy, and the extent of slowing was greater as the task difficulty increased across cue focality. Finally, perceived task importance appeared to play an important role in the interactive link between cue focality and strategy use on PM performance for the more challenging, nonfocal PM tasks. Specifically, moderation analyses suggested that greater perceived task importance alone may improve the likelihood of PM success for moderately challenging PM tasks (i.e., nonfocal-category), but for the most challenging PM tasks (i.e., nonfocal-syllable), individuals' strategy use was still associated with better PM performance. The present study expands our understanding of metacognition's role in PM performance and has implications for everyday PM performance.

Motor Strategies: The Role of Active Behavior in Spatial Hearing Research

When completing a task, the ability to implement behavioral strategies to solve it in an effective and cognitively less-demanding way is extremely adaptive for humans. This behavior makes it possible to accumulate evidence and test one's own predictions about the external world. In this work, starting from examples in the field of spatial hearing research, I analyze the importance of considering motor strategies in perceptual tasks, and I stress the urgent need to create ecological experimental settings, which are essential in allowing the implementation of such behaviors and in measuring them. In particular, I will consider head movements as an example of strategic behavior implemented to solve acoustic space-perception tasks.

Cognitive offloading is value-based decision making: Modelling cognitive effort and the expected value of memory

How do people decide between maintaining information in short-term memory or offloading it to external reminders? How does this affect subsequent memory? This article presents a simple computational model based on two principles: A) items stored in brain-based memory occupy its limited capacity, generating an opportunity cost; B) reminders incur a small physical-action cost, but capacity is effectively unlimited. These costs are balanced against the value of remembering, which determines the optimal strategy. Simulations reproduce many empirical findings, including: 1) preferential offloading of high-value items; 2) increased offloading at higher memory loads; 3) offloading can cause forgetting of offloaded items ('Google effect') but 4) improved memory for other items ('saving-enhanced memory'); 5) reduced saving-enhanced-memory effect when reminders are unreliable; 6) influence of item-value: people may preferentially offload high-value items and store additional low-value items in brain-based memory; 7) greatest sensitivity to the effort of reminder-setting at intermediate rather than highest/lowest levels of task difficulty; 8) increased offloading in individuals with poorer memory ability. Therefore, value-based decision-making provides a simple unifying account of many cognitive offloading phenomena. These results are consistent with an opportunity-cost model of cognitive effort, which can explain why internal memory feels effortful but reminders do not.

The role of offloading intentions on future-oriented thinking

Offloading (e.g., using Google calendar reminders) has been shown to improve prospective memory (PM). One unstudied aspect of PM offloading is whether having reminders reduces our future-oriented thinking about PM intentions in contexts in which the intention cannot be fulfilled. In the current study, participants were given two blocks of an ongoing lexical decision task. Prior to beginning the task, participants formed an intention to make a special response to PM targets only in block 2. Participants in the reminder condition had the PM intention displayed at the top of the screen in block 2, whereas those in the no-reminder condition did not. To assess activation of the intention out of context, PM lures (Experiment 1) or thought probes (Experiments 2 and 3) were presented in block 1. Results showed that reminders improved PM performance in block 2 but did not reduce lure interference or PM-related thoughts in block 1. These findings suggest that offloaded memory representations remain as activated and accessible as non-offloaded representations outside the context in which intentions can be fulfilled.

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

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.

Children's metacognition and cognitive offloading in an immediate memory task

Cognitive offloading is used to supplement internal processing demands through external actions such as writing down information. While metacognition plays a critical role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions, less is known about the relation between metacognition and cognitive offloading in children. Here, we introduced an immediate memory task to 11- to 12-year-olds under two conditions: no choice to offload and choice to offload. Participants made metacognitive judgements about their memory capacity, and the task performance components such as accuracy and effort. Our results revealed that recall accuracy of the to-be-remembered items increased in the choice condition. Interestingly, while there was a consensus amongst participants that they chose to offload to maximise accuracy and reduce effort, there was no relation between offloading behaviour and metacognitions about accuracy and effort. On the other hand, metacognition for memory capacity was related to offloading behaviour. We discuss the implications for further understanding of the relation between cognitive offloading and metacognition in children.

Multifaceted consequences of visual distraction during natural behaviour

Visual distraction is a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life. Studying the consequences of distraction during temporally extended tasks, however, is not tractable with traditional methods. Here we developed a virtual reality approach that segments complex behaviour into cognitive subcomponents, including encoding, visual search, working memory usage, and decision-making. Participants copied a model display by selecting objects from a resource pool and placing them into a workspace. By manipulating the distractibility of objects in the resource pool, we discovered interfering effects of distraction across the different cognitive subcomponents. We successfully traced the consequences of distraction all the way from overall task performance to the decision-making processes that gate memory usage. Distraction slowed down behaviour and increased costly body movements. Critically, distraction increased encoding demands, slowed visual search, and decreased reliance on working memory. Our findings illustrate that the effects of visual distraction during natural behaviour can be rather focal but nevertheless have cascading consequences.

What the eyes, confidence, and partner's identity can tell about change of mind

Perceptual confidence reflects the ability to evaluate the evidence that supports perceptual decisions. It is thought to play a critical role in guiding decision-making. However, only a few empirical studies have actually investigated the function of perceptual confidence. To address this issue, we designed a perceptual task in which participants provided a confidence judgment on the accuracy of their perceptual decision. Then, they viewed the response of a machine or human partner, and they were instructed to decide whether to keep or change their initial response. We observed that confidence predicted participants' changes of mind more than task difficulty and perceptual accuracy. Additionally, interacting with a machine, compared to a human, decreased confidence and increased participants tendency to change their initial decision, suggesting that both confidence and changes of mind are influenced by contextual factors, such as the identity of a partner. Finally, variations in confidence judgments but not change of mind were correlated with pre-response pupil dynamics, indicating that arousal changes are linked to confidence computations. This study contributes to our understanding of the factors influencing confidence and changes of mind and also evaluates the possibility of using pupil dynamics as a proxy of confidence.

Spillover effects of reminder nudges in complex environments

We present an experiment on the immediate and lasting effects of reminder nudges in a complex environment. In the study, 1,542 subjects face a setting where, within a brief time frame, they have to pay attention to and perform multiple actions in a computer game. The experiment investigates i) the effect of reminders on the reminded actions and their spillovers on nonreminded actions; ii) spillovers between multiple nudges when the number of reminded actions is increased; and iii) intertemporal spillovers from having been exposed to reminders on actions after reminders are withdrawn. Our findings reveal, first, that reminders have a positive effect on the overall number of actions performed. It results from the positive direct effect on the reminded actions dominating the negative spillovers on nonreminded actions. These negative effects are notable in our setting, where reminders could potentially have positive spillovers by freezing attention or by indirectly prompting actions similar to the reminded ones. Second, we observe that reminder nudges are scalable. Increasing the number of reminded actions leads subjects to take more actions overall, albeit with diminishing returns and more pronounced negative spillover effects. Third, after reminders are withdrawn, the positive effect on reminded actions diminishes, while negative spillovers on nonreminded actions persist, thus rendering reminders ineffective in increasing the overall number of actions performed.

A bonus task boosts people's willingness to offload cognition to an algorithm

With the increased sophistication of technology, humans have the possibility to offload a variety of tasks to algorithms. Here, we investigated whether the extent to which people are willing to offload an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm is modulated by the availability of a bonus task and by the knowledge about the algorithm's capacity. Participants performed a multiple object tracking (MOT) task which required them to visually track targets on a screen. Participants could offload an unlimited number of targets to a "computer partner". If participants decided to offload the entire task to the computer, they could instead perform a bonus task which resulted in additional financial gain-however, this gain was conditional on a high performance accuracy in the MOT task. Thus, participants should only offload the entire task if they trusted the computer to perform accurately. We found that participants were significantly more willing to completely offload the task if they were informed beforehand that the computer's accuracy was flawless (Experiment 1 vs. 2). Participants' offloading behavior was not significantly affected by whether the bonus task was incentivized or not (Experiment 2 vs. 3). These results combined with those from our previous study (Wahn et al. in PLoS ONE 18:e0286102, 2023), which did not include a bonus task but was identical otherwise, show that the human willingness to offload an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm is considerably boosted by the availability of a bonus task-even if not incentivized-and by the knowledge about the algorithm's capacity.

Imagery and Verbal Strategies in Spatial Memory for Route and Survey Descriptions

Being able to represent and remember verbally-encoded information about spatial environments from different perspectives is important for numerous daily activities. The present study examined how frequently individuals spontaneously engage in visual mental imagery and verbal rehearsal strategies in memory recall of spatial descriptions, and whether using certain strategies is associated with better recall performance. Memory recall for route (person-centred) and survey (object-centred) spatial descriptions was examined in a sample of 105 neurotypical individuals, who also reported to what extent they used route- and survey-based mental imagery and verbal rehearsal strategies in each description. Results showed that participants favoured a path visualisation strategy to recall the route description and a map visualisation strategy to recall the survey description. Regression models further showed that employing both imagery and verbal strategies was associated with better recall for both route and survey descriptions, although imagery strategies held a higher predictive power. The present findings highlight the fact that the spontaneous use of internal strategies in the form of visual imagery and verbal rehearsal is ubiquitous when recalling spatial descriptions and a core part of efficient spatial memory functioning.

Where scrollbars are clicked, and why

Scrolling is a widely used mean to interact with visual displays, usually to move content to a certain target location on the display. Understanding how user scroll might identify potentially suboptimal use and allows to infer users' intentions. In the present study, we examined where users click on a scrollbar depending on the intended scrolling action. In two online experiments, click positions were systematically adapted to the intended scrolling action. Click position selection could not be explained as strict optimization of the distance traveled with the cursor, memory load, or motor-cognitive factors. By contrast, for identical scrolling actions click positions strongly depended on the context and on previous scrolls. The behavior of our participants closely resembled behavior observed for manipulation of other physical devices and suggested a simple heuristic of movement planning. The results have implications for modeling human-computer interaction and may contribute to predicting user behavior.

Human and AI collaboration in the higher education environment: opportunities and concerns

In service of the goal of examining how cognitive science can facilitate human-computer interactions in complex systems, we explore how cognitive psychology research might help educators better utilize artificial intelligence and AI supported tools as facilitatory to learning, rather than see these emerging technologies as a threat. We also aim to provide historical perspective, both on how automation and technology has generated unnecessary apprehension over time, and how generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT are a product of the discipline of cognitive science. We introduce a model for how higher education instruction can adapt to the age of AI by fully capitalizing on the role that metacognition knowledge and skills play in determining learning effectiveness. Finally, we urge educators to consider how AI can be seen as a critical collaborator to be utilized in our efforts to educate around the critical workforce skills of effective communication and collaboration.

Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys - top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

Perseveration on cognitive strategies

To acquire and process information, performers can frequently rely on both internal and extended cognitive strategies. However, after becoming acquainted with two strategies, performers in previous studies exhibited a pronounced behavioral preference for just one strategy, which we refer to as perseveration. What is the origin of such perseveration? Previous research suggests that a prime reason for cognitive strategy choice is performance: Perseveration could reflect the preference for a superior strategy as determined by accurately monitoring each strategy's performance. However, following our preregistered hypotheses, we conjectured that perseveration persisted even if the available strategies featured similar performances. Such persisting perseveration could be reasonable if costs related to decision making, performance monitoring, and strategy switching would be additionally taken into account on top of isolated strategy performances. Here, we used a calibration procedure to equalize performances of strategies as far as possible and tested whether perseveration persisted. In Experiment 1, performance adjustment of strategies succeeded in equating accuracy but not speed. Many participants perseverated on the faster strategy. In Experiment 2, calibration succeeded regarding both accuracy and speed. No substantial perseveration was detected, and residual perseveration was conceivably related to metacognitive performance evaluations. We conclude that perseveration on cognitive strategies is frequently rooted in performance: Performers willingly use multiple strategies for the same task if performance differences appear sufficiently small. Surprisingly, other possible reasons for perseveration like effort or switch cost avoidance, mental challenge seeking, satisficing, or episodic retrieval of previous stimulus-strategy-bindings, were less relevant in the present study.

Controlling the input: How one-year-old infants sustain visual attention

Traditionally, the exogenous control of gaze by external saliencies and the endogenous control of gaze by knowledge and context have been viewed as competing systems, with late infancy seen as a period of strengthening top-down control over the vagaries of the input. Here we found that one-year-old infants control sustained attention through head movements that increase the visibility of the attended object. Freely moving one-year-old infants (n = 45) wore head-mounted eye trackers and head motion sensors while exploring sets of toys of the same physical size. The visual size of the objects, a well-documented salience, varied naturally with the infant's moment-to-moment posture and head movements. Sustained attention to an object was characterized by the tight control of head movements that created and then stabilized a visual size advantage for the attended object for sustained attention. The findings show collaboration between exogenous and endogenous attentional systems and suggest new hypotheses about the development of sustained visual attention.

Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys - top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

Intention offloading: Domain-general versus task-specific confidence signals

Intention offloading refers to the use of external reminders to help remember delayed intentions (e.g., setting an alert to help you remember when you need to take your medication). Research has found that metacognitive processes influence offloading such that individual differences in confidence predict individual differences in offloading regardless of objective cognitive ability. The current study investigated the cross-domain organization of this relationship. Participants performed two perceptual discrimination tasks where objective accuracy was equalized using a staircase procedure. In a memory task, two measures of intention offloading were collected, (1) the overall likelihood of setting reminders, and (2) the bias in reminder-setting compared to the optimal strategy. It was found that perceptual confidence was associated with the first measure but not the second. It is shown that this is because individual differences in perceptual confidence capture meaningful differences in objective ability despite the staircase procedure. These findings indicate that intention offloading is influenced by both domain-general and task-specific metacognitive signals. They also show that even when task performance is equalized via staircasing, individual differences in confidence cannot be considered a pure measure of metacognitive bias.

Watching videos of a drawing hand improves students' understanding of the normal probability distribution

Understanding normal probability distributions is a crucial objective in mathematics and statistics education. Drawing upon cognitive psychology research, this study explores the use of drawings and visualizations as effective scaffolds to enhance students' comprehension. Although much research has documented the helpfulness of drawing as a research tool to reveal students' knowledge states, its direct utility in advancing higher-order cognitive processes remains understudied. In Study 1, qualitative methods were utilized to identify common misunderstandings among students regarding canonical depictions of the normal probability distribution. Building on these insights, Study 2 experimentally compared three instructional videos (static slides, dynamic drawing, and dynamic drawings done by a visible hand). The hand drawing video led to better learning than the other versions. Study 3 examined whether the benefits from observing a hand drawing could be reproduced by a dynamic cursor moving around otherwise static slides (without the presence of a hand). Results showed no significant learning difference between observing a hand drawing and a moving cursor, both outperforming a control. This research links the cognitive process of drawing with its educational role and provides insights into its potential to enhance memory, cognition, and inform instructional methods.

Spatial hearing training in virtual reality with simulated asymmetric hearing loss

Sound localization is essential to perceive the surrounding world and to interact with objects. This ability can be learned across time, and multisensory and motor cues play a crucial role in the learning process. A recent study demonstrated that when training localization skills, reaching to the sound source to determine its position reduced localization errors faster and to a greater extent as compared to just naming sources' positions, despite the fact that in both tasks, participants received the same feedback about the correct position of sound sources in case of wrong response. However, it remains to establish which features have made reaching to sound more effective as compared to naming. In the present study, we introduced a further condition in which the hand is the effector providing the response, but without it reaching toward the space occupied by the target source: the pointing condition. We tested three groups of participants (naming, pointing, and reaching groups) each while performing a sound localization task in normal and altered listening situations (i.e. mild-moderate unilateral hearing loss) simulated through auditory virtual reality technology. The experiment comprised four blocks: during the first and the last block, participants were tested in normal listening condition, while during the second and the third in altered listening condition. We measured their performance, their subjective judgments (e.g. effort), and their head-related behavior (through kinematic tracking). First, people's performance decreased when exposed to asymmetrical mild-moderate hearing impairment, more specifically on the ipsilateral side and for the pointing group. Second, we documented that all groups decreased their localization errors across altered listening blocks, but the extent of this reduction was higher for reaching and pointing as compared to the naming group. Crucially, the reaching group leads to a greater error reduction for the side where the listening alteration was applied. Furthermore, we documented that, across blocks, reaching and pointing groups increased the implementation of head motor behavior during the task (i.e., they increased approaching head movements toward the space of the sound) more than naming. Third, while performance in the unaltered blocks (first and last) was comparable, only the reaching group continued to exhibit a head behavior similar to those developed during the altered blocks (second and third), corroborating the previous observed relationship between the reaching to sounds task and head movements. In conclusion, this study further demonstrated the effectiveness of reaching to sounds as compared to pointing and naming in the learning processes. This effect could be related both to the process of implementing goal-directed motor actions and to the role of reaching actions in fostering the implementation of head-related motor strategies.

Google effects on memory: a meta-analytical review of the media effects of intensive Internet search behavior

People are increasingly using the web for fact-checking and other forms of information seeking. The "Google effects" refers to the idea that individuals rely on the Internet as a source of knowledge rather than remembering it for themselves. However, few literature review have yet comprehensively examined the media effects of this intensive Internet search behavior. In this study, by carrying out meta-analysis, we found that google effects is closely associated with cognitive load, behavioral phenotype and cognitive self-esteem. And this phenomenon is also more likely to happen while using a mobile phone to browse the Internet rather than a computer. People with a larger knowledge base are less susceptible to the consequences of Internet use than those with a smaller knowledge base. The media effect was stronger for persons who had used the Internet before than for those who had not. And meta-analyses show that participants in North America (parameter = -1.0365, 95%CI = [-1.8758, -0.1972], p < 0.05) are more susceptible to frequent Internet search behavior relative to other regions. Overall, google effects on memory challenges the way individuals seek and read information, and it may lead to changes in cognitive and memory mechanisms.

Academic publisher guidelines on AI usage: A ChatGPT supported thematic analysis

Background

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI (GenAI) have become more common in academic settings, it is necessary to examine how these tools interact with issues of authorship, academic integrity, and research methodologies. The current landscape lacks cohesive policies and guidelines for regulating AI's role in academic research which has prompted discussions among publishers, authors, and institutions.

Methods

This study employs inductive thematic analysis to explore publisher policies regarding AI-assisted authorship and academic work. Our methods involved a two-fold analysis using both AI-assisted and traditional unassisted techniques to examine the available policies from leading academic publishers and other publishing or academic entities. The framework was designed to offer multiple perspectives, harnessing the strengths of AI for pattern recognition while leveraging human expertise for nuanced interpretation. The results of these two analyses are combined to form the final themes.

Results

Our findings indicate six overall themes, three of which were independently identified in both the AI-assisted and unassisted, manual analysis using common software tools. A broad consensus appears among publishers that human authorship remains paramount and that the use of GenAI tools is permissible but must be disclosed. However, GenAI tools are increasingly acknowledged for their supportive roles, including text generation and data analysis. The study also discusses the inherent limitations and biases of AI-assisted analysis, necessitating rigorous scrutiny by authors, reviewers, and editors.

Conclusions

There is a growing recognition of AI's role as a valuable auxiliary tool in academic research, but one that comes with caveats pertaining to integrity, accountability, and interpretive limitations. This study used a novel analysis supported by GenAI tools to identify themes emerging in the policy landscape, underscoring the need for an informed, flexible approach to policy formulation that can adapt to the rapidly evolving landscape of AI technologies.

Sound localization in noisy contexts: performance, metacognitive evaluations and head movements

Localizing sounds in noisy environments can be challenging. Here, we reproduce real-life soundscapes to investigate the effects of environmental noise on sound localization experience. We evaluated participants' performance and metacognitive assessments, including measures of sound localization effort and confidence, while also tracking their spontaneous head movements. Normal-hearing participants (N = 30) were engaged in a speech-localization task conducted in three common soundscapes that progressively increased in complexity: nature, traffic, and a cocktail party setting. To control visual information and measure behaviors, we used visual virtual reality technology. The results revealed that the complexity of the soundscape had an impact on both performance errors and metacognitive evaluations. Participants reported increased effort and reduced confidence for sound localization in more complex noise environments. On the contrary, the level of soundscape complexity did not influence the use of spontaneous exploratory head-related behaviors. We also observed that, irrespective of the noisy condition, participants who implemented a higher number of head rotations and explored a wider extent of space by rotating their heads made lower localization errors. Interestingly, we found preliminary evidence that an increase in spontaneous head movements, specifically the extent of head rotation, leads to a decrease in perceived effort and an increase in confidence at the single-trial level. These findings expand previous observations regarding sound localization in noisy environments by broadening the perspective to also include metacognitive evaluations, exploratory behaviors and their interactions.

Mutual interplay between cognitive offloading and secondary task performance

Various modern tools, such as smartphones, allow for cognitive offloading (i.e., the externalization of cognitive processes). In this study, we examined the use and consequences of cognitive offloading in demanding situations in which people perform multiple tasks concurrently-mimicking the requirements of daily life. In a preregistered study, we adapted the dual-task paradigm so that one of the tasks allowed for cognitive offloading. As a primary task, our participants (N = 172) performed the pattern copy task-a highly demanding working memory task that allows for offloading at various degrees. In this task, we manipulated the temporal costs of offloading. Concurrently, half of the participants responded to a secondary N-back task. As our main research question, we investigated the impact of offloading behavior on secondary task performance. We observed that more pronounced offloading in the condition without temporal costs was accompanied by a more accurate performance in the N-back task. Furthermore, the necessity to respond to the N-back task increased offloading behavior. These results suggest an interplay between offloading and secondary task performance: in demanding situations, individuals increasingly use cognitive offloading, which releases internal resources that can then be devoted to improving performance in other, concurrent tasks.

Training in new forms of human-AI interaction improves complex working memory and switching skills of language professionals

AI-related technologies used in the language industry, including automatic speech recognition (ASR) and machine translation (MT), are designed to improve human efficiency. However, humans are still in the loop for accuracy and quality, creating a working environment based on Human-AI Interaction (HAII). Very little is known about these newly-created working environments and their effects on cognition. The present study focused on a novel practice, interlingual respeaking (IRSP), where real-time subtitles in another language are created through the interaction between a human and ASR software. To this end, we set up an experiment that included a purpose-made training course on IRSP over 5 weeks, investigating its effects on cognition, and focusing on executive functioning (EF) and working memory (WM). We compared the cognitive performance of 51 language professionals before and after the course. Our variables were reading span (a complex WM measure), switching skills, and sustained attention. IRSP training course improved complex WM and switching skills but not sustained attention. However, the participants were slower after the training, indicating increased vigilance with the sustained attention tasks. Finally, complex WM was confirmed as the primary competence in IRSP. The reasons and implications of these findings will be discussed.

Just write it down: Similarity in the benefit from cognitive offloading in young and older adults

Past research conducted primarily in young adults has demonstrated the utility of cognitive offloading for benefitting performance of memory-based tasks, particularly at high memory loads. At the same time, older adults show declines in a variety of memory abilities, including subtle changes in short-term memory, suggesting that cognitive offloading could also benefit performance of memory-based tasks in this group. To this end, 94 participants (62 young adults, 32 older adults) were tested on a retrospective audiovisual short-term memory task in two blocked conditions. Offloading was permitted in the offloading choice condition but not in the internal memory condition. Performance was improved for both age groups in the offloading choice condition compared to the internal memory condition. Moreover, the choice to use the offloading strategy was similar across age groups at high memory loads, and use of the offloading strategy benefitted performance for young and older adults similarly. These data suggest that older adults can make effective use of cognitive offloading to rescue performance of memory-based activities, and invites future research on the benefits of cognitive offloading for older adults in other, more complex tasks where age-related memory impairment is expected to be more prominent.

Left or right, that is the question: use of egocentric frame of reference and the right-eye advantage for understanding gestural signs in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

How do bottlenose dolphins visually perceive the space around them? In particular, what cues do they use as a frame of reference for left-right perception? To address this question, we examined the dolphin's responses to various manipulations of the spatial relationship between the dolphin and the trainer by using gestural signs for actions given by the trainer, which have different meanings in the left and right hands. When the dolphins were tested with their backs to the trainer (Experiment 1) or in an inverted position underwater (Experiments 2 and 3), correct responses from the trainer's perspective were maintained for signs related to movement direction instructions. In contrast, reversed responses were frequently observed for signs that required different sounds for the left and right hands. When the movement direction instructions were presented with symmetrical graphic signs such as " × " and "●", accuracy decreased in the inverted posture (Experiment 3). Furthermore, when the signs for sounds were presented from either the left or right side of the dolphin's body, performance was better when the side of the sign movement coincided with the body side on which it was presented than when it was mismatched (Experiment 4). In the final experiment, when one eye was covered with an eyecup, the results showed that, as in the case of body-side presentation, performance was better when the open eye coincided with the side on which the sign movement was presented. These results indicate that dolphins used the egocentric frame for visuospatial cognition. In addition, they showed better performances when the gestural signs were presented to the right eye, suggesting the possibility of a left-hemispheric advantage in the dolphin's visuospatial cognition.

A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study on the prefrontal correlates of cognitive offloading via a personal knowledge assistant

The saving of previously encoded information boosts both memory for subsequent information (saving-enhanced memory; SEM) as well as cognitive performance in general (saving-enhanced performance; SEP). These findings have been replicated in a setting that involves the assistance by an intelligent software that automatically structures and saves work content in an interactive sidebar. It is assumed that beneficial effects on cognitive performance due to (automatic) saving are caused by a reduction in current workload by means of cognitive offloading. We tested this assumption by measuring neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-once after saving and once after deleting of previously collected information that had to be recalled later-on. On a behavioral level, there was a brief benefit of saving. However, cognitive offloading became most apparent on a neural level: after saving, participants showed significantly lower activation in the right DLPFC. Also, the more participants benefited from cognitive offloading, the more they were able to re-access previously collected, saved information. Thus, fNIRS results indicated reduced mental load after saving, confirming the assumption that saving triggers cognitive offloading.

Cognitive perspectives on maintaining physicians' medical expertise: I. Reimagining Maintenance of Certification to promote lifelong learning

Until recently, physicians in the USA who were board-certified in a specialty needed to take a summative test every 6-10 years. However, the 24 Member Boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties are in the process of switching toward much more frequent assessments, which we refer to as longitudinal assessment. The goal of longitudinal assessments is to provide formative feedback to physicians to help them learn content they do not know as well as serve an evaluation for board certification. We present five articles collectively covering the science behind this change, the likely outcomes, and some open questions. This initial article introduces the context behind this change. This article also discusses various forms of lifelong learning opportunities that can help physicians stay current, including longitudinal assessment, and the pros and cons of each.

Don't hide the instruction manual: A dynamic trade-off between using internal and external templates during visual search

Visual search is typically studied by requiring participants to memorize a template initially, for which they subsequently search in a crowded display. Search in daily life, however, often involves templates that remain accessible externally, and may therefore be (re)attended for just-in-time encoding or to refresh internal template representations. Here, we show that participants indeed use external templates during search when given the chance. This behavior was observed during both simple and complex search, scaled with task difficulty, and was associated with improved performance. Furthermore, we show that participants used external sampling not only to offload memory, but also as a means of verifying whether the template was remembered correctly at the end of trials. We conclude that the external world may not only provide the challenge (e.g., distractors), but may dynamically ease search. These results argue for extensions of state-of-the-art models of search, because external sampling seems to be used frequently, in at least two ways and is actually beneficial for task performance. Our findings support a model of visual working memory that emphasizes a resource-efficient trade-off between storing and (re)attending external information.

Memory compensation strategies in everyday life: similarities and differences between younger and older adults

Memory compensation strategies serve an important role in everyday functioning, especially in the face of cognitive decline. Research on the external memory compensation strategies employed by older adults has focused almost entirely on non-digital tools. Less is known about how memory compensation strategies might have changed due to the rapid and widespread uptake of digital technologies. In the current research, 208 younger adults and 114 older adults freely reported what internal or external memory strategy or tool they would use to accomplish 20 different everyday memory tasks. Participants' responses were coded as involving either internal (e.g. using a mnemonic) or external (e.g. writing a list) strategies, and then underwent further categorisation to classify types of internal and external strategies (e.g. digital or physical tool). Findings indicated that external strategies were much more prevalent than internal strategies for both younger and older adults, and that digital compensation strategies were prevalent for both age groups. There were age differences such that older adults reported more strategies overall, and were less likely to report digital tools, more likely to report physical tools, more likely to report environmental tools, and less likely to report social tools than younger adults. Positive attitudes to technology were associated with digital tool use for older but not younger participants. Findings are discussed in terms of existing theories and approaches to studying memory compensation strategies and cognitive offloading.

Eye Movements as Proxy for Visual Working Memory Usage: Increased Reliance on the External World in Korsakoff Syndrome

In the assessment of visual working memory, estimating the maximum capacity is currently the gold standard. However, traditional tasks disregard that information generally remains available in the external world. Only when to-be-used information is not readily accessible, memory is taxed. Otherwise, people sample information from the environment as a form of cognitive offloading. To investigate how memory deficits impact the trade-off between sampling externally or storing internally, we compared gaze behaviour of individuals with Korsakoff amnesia (n = 24, age range 47-74 years) and healthy controls (n = 27, age range 40-81 years) on a copy task that provoked different strategies by having information freely accessible (facilitating sampling) or introducing a gaze-contingent waiting time (provoking storing). Indeed, patients sampled more often and longer, compared to controls. When sampling became time-consuming, controls reduced sampling and memorised more. Patients also showed reduced and longer sampling in this condition, suggesting an attempt at memorisation. Importantly, however, patients sampled disproportionately more often than controls, whilst accuracy dropped. This finding suggests that amnesia patients sample frequently and do not fully compensate for increased sampling costs by memorising more at once. In other words, Korsakoff amnesia resulted in a heavy reliance on the world as 'external memory'.

Mountains of memory in a sea of uncertainty: Sampling the external world despite useful information in visual working memory

A large part of research on visual working memory (VWM) has traditionally focused on estimating its maximum capacity. Yet, humans rarely need to load up their VWM maximally during natural behavior, since visual information often remains accessible in the external world. Recent work, using paradigms that take into account the accessibility of information in the outside world, has indeed shown that observers utilize only one or two items in VWM before sampling from the external world again. One straightforward interpretation of this finding is that, in daily behavior, much fewer items are memorized than the typically reported capacity limits. Here, we first investigate whether this lower reliance on VWM when information is externally accessible might instead reflect resampling before VWM is actually depleted. To this aim we devised an online task, in which participants copied a model (six items in a 4x4 grid; always accessible) in an adjacent empty 4x4 grid. A key aspect of our paradigm is that we (unpredictably) interrupted participants just before inspection of the model with a 2-alternative-forced-choice (2-AFC) question, probing their VWM content. Critically, we observed above-chance performance on probes appearing just before model inspection. This finding shows that the external world was resampled, despite VWM still containing relevant information. We then asked whether increasing the cost of sampling causes participants to load up more information in VWM or, alternatively, to squeeze out more information from VWM (at the cost of making more errors). To manipulate the cost of resampling, we made it more difficult (specifically, more time-consuming) to access the model. We show that with increased cost of accessing the model (which lead to fewer, but longer model inspections), participants could place more items correctly immediately after sampling, and they kept attempting to place items for longer after their first error. These findings demonstrate that participants both encoded more information in VWM and made attempts to squeeze out more information from VWM when sampling became more costly. We argue that human observers constantly evaluate how certain they are of their VWM contents, and only use that VWM content of which their certainty exceeds a context-dependent "action threshold". This threshold, in turn, depends on the trade-off between the cost of resampling and the benefits of making an action. We argue that considering the interplay between the available VWM contents and a context-dependent action threshold, is key for reconciling the traditional VWM literature with VWM use in our day-to-day behavior.

Cognitive Load Management: An Invaluable Tool for Safe and Effective Surgical Training

This article highlights the importance of considering Cognitive Load (CL) and Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) during surgical training, focusing on the acquisition of intra-operative skills. It describes the basis of CLT with the overarching aim of describing CLT-based techniques to enhance current training strategies and surgical performance, many of which are instinctively already employed in surgical practice. Currently, methods of feedback and assessment are imperfect - typically subjective, unsystematic, opportunistic, or retrospective, and at risk of human bias. Surgical Sabermetrics, the advanced analytics of surgical and audio-visual data, aims to enhance this feedback by providing objective, real-time, digital-based feedback. This article introduces the benefit of real-time measurement of CL to enhance feedback and its applications to surgical performance that follow the ethos of Surgical Sabermetrics.¹ The 2022 theme for ICOSET was "Making it Better." Cognitive Load and Surgical Sabermetrics principles provide tools to make Surgical training better, with the goal of higher quality care for patients.

The division of linguistic labour for offloading conceptual understanding

The division of linguistic labour (DLL), initially theorized by philosophers, has gained the attention of cognitive scientists in the last decade. Contrary to some controversial philosophical accounts of DLL, we propose that it is an extended mind strategy of offloading conceptual understanding onto other people. In this article, we empirically explore this proposal by providing an exploratory experimental paradigm to search for the mechanisms underwriting DLL and how they may work in practice. We developed a between-subjects experiment in which participants had to categorize two pairs of highly confusable dog breeds after receiving categorization training on just one pair of breeds. In the treatment group, participants were grouped in dyads and were allowed to interact with each other by means of the labels of these four dog breeds. In their queries to trained 'experts', novices frequently used labels to refer to breeds that they could not identify themselves. Experts were highly responsive to their paired novices' queries, and the rates of querying for the two members within a dyad were positively correlated. Independent categorization failure and offloading categorization success lead to subsequent increases in querying by novices, indicating adaptive use of offloading. Self-reports of breed knowledge were higher for experts within a dyad compared to isolated experts. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Take a load off: examining partial and complete cognitive offloading of medication information

Although cognitive offloading, or the use of physical action to reduce internal cognitive demands, is a commonly used strategy in everyday life, relatively little is known about the conditions that encourage offloading and the memorial consequences of different offloading strategies for performance. Much of the extant work in this domain has focused on laboratory-based tasks consisting of word lists, letter strings, or numerical stimuli and thus makes little contact with real-world scenarios under which engaging in cognitive offloading might be likely. Accordingly, the current work examines offloading choice behavior and potential benefits afforded by offloading health-related information. Experiment 1 tests for internal memory performance for different pieces of missing medication interaction information. Experiment 2 tests internal memory and offloading under full offloading and partial offloading instructions for interaction outcomes that are relatively low severity (e.g., sweating). Experiment 3 extends Experiment 2 by testing offloading behavior and benefit in low-severity, medium-severity (e.g., backache), and high-severity interaction outcomes (e.g., heart attack). Here, we aimed to elucidate the potential benefits afforded by partial offloading and to examine whether there appears to be a preference for choosing to offload (i) difficult-to-remember information across outcomes that vary in severity, as well as (ii) information from more severe interaction outcomes. Results suggest that partial offloading benefits performance compared to relying on internal memory alone, but full offloading is more beneficial to performance than partial offloading.

Embodying cognitive ethology

Cognitive psychology considers the environment as providing information, not affecting fundamental information processes. Thus, cognitive psychology's traditional paradigms study responses to precisely timed stimuli in controlled environments. However, new research demonstrates the environment does influence cognitive processes and offers cognitive psychology new methods. The authors examine one such proposal: cognitive ethology. Cognitive ethology improves cognitive psychology's ecological validity through first drawing inspiration from robust phenomena in the real world, then moving into the lab to test those phenomena. To support such methods, cognitive ethologists appeal to embodied cognition, or 4E cognition, for its rich relationships between agents and environments. However, the authors note while cognitive ethology focuses on new methods (epistemology) inspired by embodied cognition, it preserves most traditional assumptions about cognitive processes (ontology). But embodied cognition-particularly its radical variants-also provides strong ontological challenges to cognitive psychology, which work against cognitive ethology. The authors argue cognitive ethology should align with the ontology of less radical embodied cognition, which produces epistemological implications, offering alternative methodologies. For example, cognitive ethology can explore differences between real-world and lab studies to fully understand how cognition depends on environments.

Outsourcing Memory to External Tools: A Review of 'Intention Offloading'

How do we remember delayed intentions? Three decades of research into prospective memory have provided insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in this form of memory. However, we depend on more than just our brains to remember intentions. We also use external props and tools such as calendars and diaries, strategically placed objects, and technologies such as smartphone alerts. This is known as 'intention offloading'. Despite the progress in our understanding of brain-based prospective memory, we know much less about the role of intention offloading in individuals' ability to fulfil delayed intentions. Here, we review recent research into intention offloading, with a particular focus on how individuals decide between storing intentions in internal memory versus external reminders. We also review studies investigating how intention offloading changes across the lifespan and how it relates to underlying brain mechanisms. We conclude that intention offloading is highly effective, experimentally tractable, and guided by metacognitive processes. Individuals have systematic biases in their offloading strategies that are stable over time. Evidence also suggests that individual differences and developmental changes in offloading strategies are driven at least in part by metacognitive processes. Therefore, metacognitive interventions could play an important role in promoting individuals' adaptive use of cognitive tools.

Offloading under cognitive load: Humans are willing to offload parts of an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm

In the near future, humans will increasingly be required to offload tasks to artificial systems to facilitate daily as well as professional activities. Yet, research has shown that humans are often averse to offloading tasks to algorithms (so-called "algorithmic aversion"). In the present study, we asked whether this aversion is also present when humans act under high cognitive load. Participants performed an attentionally demanding task (a multiple object tracking (MOT) task), which required them to track a subset of moving targets among distractors on a computer screen. Participants first performed the MOT task alone (Solo condition) and were then given the option to offload an unlimited number of targets to a computer partner (Joint condition). We found that participants significantly offloaded some (but not all) targets to the computer partner, thereby improving their individual tracking accuracy (Experiment 1). A similar tendency for offloading was observed when participants were informed beforehand that the computer partner's tracking accuracy was flawless (Experiment 2). The present findings show that humans are willing to (partially) offload task demands to an algorithm to reduce their own cognitive load. We suggest that the cognitive load of a task is an important factor to consider when evaluating human tendencies for offloading cognition onto artificial systems.

Strategic use of internal and external memory in everyday life: episodic, semantic, procedural, and prospective purposes

Humans have access to both internal memory (information stored in the brain) and external memory (information stored in the environment). To what extent do we use each in everyday life? In two experiments, participants rated both internal and external memory for frequency of use, dependability, ease of use (Experiment 1), and likelihood of use (Experiment 2) across four purposes: episodic, semantic, procedural, and prospective. Experiment 1 showed that internal memory was favoured for episodic and procedural purposes, while external memory was favoured for semantic purposes. Experiment 2 further clarified that internal memory was favoured for episodic and common procedural purposes, while external memory was favoured for uncommon semantic, uncommon procedural, and far-term prospective purposes. This strategic division of labour plays to the strengths of both forms of memory. Participants also generally rated external memory as more dependable and easier to use. Results support the memory symbiosis framework.

Framing cognitive offloading in terms of gains or losses: achieving a more optimal use of reminders

Nowadays individuals can readily set reminders to offload intentions onto external resources, such as smartphone alerts, rather than using internal memory. Individuals tend to be biased, setting more reminders than would be optimal. We address the question whether the reminder bias depends on offloading scenarios being framed as either gains or losses, both between-participants (Experiment 1) and within-participants (Experiment 2). In both experiments, framing of reminders in terms of gains resulted in participants employing a risk-averse strategy and using more reminders than would be optimal. Importantly, however, participants used reminders more optimally and were more willing to choose the risk-seeking option of remembering internally when reminders implied a loss. Based on metacognitive measures in Experiment 2, the reminder bias increased the more underconfident participants were about their memory abilities in both framing scenarios. Framing did not alter this relationship between erroneous metacognitive underconfidence and reminder bias but provides an additional influence. We conclude that emphasizing the losses (costs) associated with external reminders helps in achieving more optimal decisions in offloading situations, and that in addition to cognitive effort and metacognitive judgments, framing needs to be considered in improving individuals’ offloading behavior.

Explanatory machine learning for justified trust in human-AI collaboration: Experiments on file deletion recommendations

In the digital age, saving and accumulating large amounts of digital data is a common phenomenon. However, saving does not only consume energy, but may also cause information overload and prevent people from staying focused and working effectively. We present and systematically examine an explanatory AI system (Dare2Del), which supports individuals to delete irrelevant digital objects. To give recommendations for the optimization of related human-computer interactions, we vary different design features (explanations, familiarity, verifiability) within and across three experiments (N ₁ = 61, N ₂ = 33, N ₃= 73). Moreover, building on the concept of distributed cognition, we check possible cross-connections between external (digital) and internal (human) memory. Specifically, we examine whether deleting external files also contributes to human forgetting of the related mental representations. Multilevel modeling results show the importance of presenting explanations for the acceptance of deleting suggestions in all three experiments, but also point to the need of their verifiability to generate trust in the system. However, we did not find clear evidence that deleting computer files contributes to human forgetting of the related memories. Based on our findings, we provide basic recommendations for the design of AI systems that can help to reduce the burden on people and the digital environment, and suggest directions for future research.

Communicative capital: a key resource for human-machine shared agency and collaborative capacity

In this work, we present a perspective on the role machine intelligence can play in supporting human abilities. In particular, we consider research in rehabilitation technologies such as prosthetic devices, as this domain requires tight coupling between human and machine. Taking an agent-based view of such devices, we propose that human-machine collaborations have a capacity to perform tasks which is a result of the combined agency of the human and the machine. We introduce communicative capital as a resource developed by a human and a machine working together in ongoing interactions. Development of this resource enables the partnership to eventually perform tasks at a capacity greater than either individual could achieve alone. We then examine the benefits and challenges of increasing the agency of prostheses by surveying literature which demonstrates that building communicative resources enables more complex, task-directed interactions. The viewpoint developed in this article extends current thinking on how best to support the functional use of increasingly complex prostheses, and establishes insight toward creating more fruitful interactions between humans and supportive, assistive, and augmentative technologies.

Responsible Remembering and Forgetting in Younger and Older Adults

Although older adults are often concerned about instances of forgetting, forgetting can be a useful feature of our memory system. Specifically, strategically forgetting less important information can benefit memory for goal-relevant information (i.e., responsible remembering and responsible forgetting). In two experiments, we presented younger and older adults with a list of words (either unrelated words or items to bring on a camping trip) with a cue indicating whether participants ("You") or their "Friend" was responsible for remembering each item. Results revealed that both younger and older adults engaged in responsible remembering and forgetting by better remembering items they were responsible for remembering, indicating a strategic utilization of their limited memory capacity. Additionally, regardless of age and the cue indicating who was responsible for remembering each item, participants used importance to guide the encoding and retrieval of information. Thus, people may be able to engage strategic cognitive mechanisms to maximize memory utility for important, goal-relevant information, and responsible forgetting can enhance memory utility in both younger and older adults by using importance to drive memory and reduce consequences for forgetting.

Evaluating Effective Connectivity of Trust in Human-Automation Interaction: A Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) Study

OBJECTIVE

Using dynamic causal modeling (DCM), we examined how credibility and reliability affected the way brain regions exert causal influence over each other-effective connectivity (EC)-in the context of trust in automation.

BACKGROUND

Multiple brain regions of the central executive network (CEN) and default mode network (DMN) have been implicated in trust judgment. However, the neural correlates of trust judgment are still relatively unexplored in terms of the directed information flow between brain regions.

METHOD

Sixteen participants observed the performance of four computer algorithms, which differed in credibility and reliability, of the system monitoring subtask of the Air Force Multi-Attribute Task Battery (AF-MATB). Using six brain regions of the CEN and DMN commonly identified to be activated in human trust, a total of 30 (forward, backward, and lateral) connection models were developed. Bayesian model averaging (BMA) was used to quantify the connectivity strength among the brain regions.

RESULTS

Relative to the high trust condition, low trust showed unique presence of specific connections, greater connectivity strengths from the prefrontal cortex, and greater network complexity. High trust condition showed no backward connections.

CONCLUSION

Results indicated that trust and distrust can be two distinctive neural processes in human-automation interaction-distrust being a more complex network than trust, possibly due to the increased cognitive load.

APPLICATION

The causal architecture of distributed brain regions inferred using DCM can help not only in the design of a balanced human-automation interface design but also in the proper use of automation in real-life situations.

Study effort and the memory cost of external store availability

Previous work demonstrates that individuals often recall less information if, at study, there is expectation that an external memory store will be available at test. One explanation for this effect is that when individuals can expect access to an external memory store, they forgo intentional, controlled efforts at encoding. The present work offers a novel test of this account by examining study effort, indexed by study time and self-reported strategy use, as a function of instructed external store availability. In two preregistered experiments, participants studied lists of to-be-remembered items for a free recall test and were either instructed that they could use their study list to support them at test or that they could not. Critically, participants controlled their own study time, and no participant had their study list at test, regardless of instruction. Consistent with the effort at encoding account, external store availability influenced both study time and strategy use, and there was evidence that these effects mediated the influence of external store availability on recall performance. Interestingly, much of the memory cost remained when controlling for study effort, thus, suggesting that the cost is potentially multiply determined.