University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2019 Aug;26(4):1347-1353. doi: 10.3758/s13423-019-01615-8.
Despite the long history and pervasiveness of cognitive offloading as a memory strategy, the memorial fate of offloaded information is not well understood. Recent work has suggested that offloading information may engage similar mechanisms as instructions to forget (e.g., directed forgetting). In the present investigation, we test this prediction by examining the serial position effect for offloaded information. Previous research has demonstrated that "forget" instructions can eliminate the primacy effect while leaving an intact recency effect. Across two experiments, participants completed a number of free recall trials using an external aid and then a final recall trial without the external aid. We compared a group that was expecting to use the aid for the final trial (offloading) with a group that was not (no-offloading). We found a memory impairment for offloaded items that was characterized by a reduced primacy effect but a typical recency effect, similar to what has been reported in research on intentional/directed forgetting.
尽管认知卸载作为一种记忆策略具有悠久的历史和普遍性，但卸载信息的记忆命运还不是很清楚。最近的研究表明，信息卸载可能涉及与遗忘指令（例如，定向遗忘）类似的机制。在本研究中，我们通过检查卸载信息的系列位置效应来检验这一预测。先前的研究表明，“遗忘”指令可以消除首因效应，同时保留完整的近因效应。在两项实验中，参与者使用外部辅助工具完成了多次自由回忆试验，然后在没有外部辅助工具的情况下进行了最后一次回忆试验。我们比较了一组预期在最后一次试验中使用辅助工具的（卸载）和一组不使用辅助工具的（无卸载）。我们发现，卸载项目的记忆受损表现为首因效应降低，但近因效应典型，与关于有意/定向遗忘的研究报告相似。
