Children Show More Selective Cognitive Offloading After First Being Compelled to Offload Indiscriminately
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7150351 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kristy L Armitage (0000-0002-1898-8622, School of Psychology The University of Queensland, corresponding author), Alicia K Jones (0000-0003-2453-0412, School of Psychology The University of Queensland), Jonathan Redshaw (0000-0002-7729-1577, School of Psychology The University of Queensland) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cognitive Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0364-0213 • E-ISSN: 1551-6709 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/cogs.70100 |
| OpenAlex | W4412994734 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
With the rise of wearable technologies, mobile devices and artificial intelligence comes a growing pressure to understand downstream effects of cognitive offloading on children's future thinking and behavior. Here, we explored whether compelling children to use an indiscriminate cognitive offloading strategy affects their subsequent strategy selection. Six‐ to 9‐year‐olds ( N = 128) completed a task where manual rotation of stimuli sometimes offloaded mental rotation demand and other times did not. In phase 1, some children were compelled to use manual rotation indiscriminately, whereas others could only use mental rotation. In phase 2, where children could freely choose their strategy, older children who were compelled to use manual rotation in phase 1 were significantly more selective in their strategy use, rotating the stimuli relatively more frequently when this behavior would offload cognitive demand than when it would not. These results provide preliminary evidence that pre‐exposure to indiscriminate cognitive offloading can promote selectivity in children's subsequent strategy use, though this selectivity may reflect a desire to avoid cognitive effort rather than improve task performance
Cognition · Child and Animal Learning Development · Cognitive Abilities and Testing · Computer Science · Neuroscience · Psychological and Educational Research Studies · Psychology
Cognitive Offloading
Mechanization in problem solving
Data Analysis
Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects
The Development of Metacognitive Knowledge in Children and Adolescents
The weirdest people in the world?
The effect of recent reminder setting on subsequent strategy and performance in a prospective memory task
Children boost their cognitive performance with a novel offloading technique
Developmental Improvements and Persisting Difficulties in Children’s Metacognitive Monitoring and Control Skills
Strategic use of reminders
My tablet’s about to go dead! 5- to 6-year-old children adjust their cognitive strategies depending on whether an external resource is reliably available
Strategy repetition in young and older adults
Creativity and flexibility in young children's use of external cognitive strategies
A feature-integration theory of attention
Children's emerging ability to balance internal and external cognitive resources
| Highly cited | No |
|---|