Cost avoidance underlies decisions to use prospective memory reminders
DOI: 10.3758/s13421-025-01683-3
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the mechanisms underlying decisions to offload prospective memory (PM) demands onto external reminders. While prior research indicates that individuals use reminders more frequently under high memory load, it remains unclear whether this behavior is driven by metacognitive confidence in internal memory or by a desire to minimize the time and effort required to complete tasks (cost avoidance). The authors aimed to disentangle these factors by manipulating the utility and cost of using reminders while measuring checking frequency and subjective confidence. The research comprised three experiments using a syllable judgment ongoing task with embedded PM targets. Participants learned either one (low load) or four/six (high load) targets. In reminder conditions, participants could press a key to access a lookup table displaying the targets. Experiment 1 manipulated search difficulty by adding distractors to the lookup table. Experiment 2 introduced a time penalty for checking the table. Experiment 3 explicitly described the effectiveness of the reminders. Across all experiments, the primary dependent variables were the frequency of reminder checks, target detection accuracy, and participants’ predictions of their own memory performance. The results consistently demonstrated that participants checked reminders more frequently under high memory load compared to low load. Crucially, this checking frequency decreased when the costs of using the reminder increased, such as when distractors made searching more difficult (Experiment 1) or when a time penalty was imposed (Experiment 2). Additionally, participants adjusted their checking behavior based on explicit information regarding reminder effectiveness (Experiment 3). Contrary to the metacognitive view, confidence in one’s own memory ability was not associated with the frequency of reminder checking. These findings indicate that offloading decisions are not primarily driven by assessments of internal memory strength. The study concludes that the decision to use prospective memory reminders is underpinned by cost avoidance rather than metacognitive monitoring of memory ability. Participants appear to weigh the effort and time required to maintain intentions internally against the costs of accessing external aids. When internal demands are high, the perceived cost of relying on memory outweighs the cost of checking a reminder, leading to increased offloading. However, if the external aid becomes costly to use, participants reduce their reliance on it. This suggests that cognitive offloading is a strategic process aimed at minimizing overall task completion costs, challenging theories that prioritize metacognitive confidence as the primary driver of such decisions.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| enrich | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 5 | 2026-07-05 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-26 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.
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