Get the unbalance right: asymmetric transfer effects in cognitive offloading

Research has shown that cognitive offloading improves immediate performance in perception, short-term memory, and prospective memory, but also has negative side effects, such as poorer memory for offloaded information. However, the transfer-related consequences of cognitive offloading on subsequent performance are still largely unknown. In two experiments, we investigated these consequences in a planning task in which participants were asked to find the shortest route connecting locations on a map, given some constraints on the order of visit. Transfer designs were used to assess the effects of training with or without the opportunity to offload cognition on subsequent planning performance when this opportunity was removed or offered. In Experiment 1, participants were either allowed to use the pen while planning on the map and spontaneously devise offloading strategies or they were prevented from doing so. In Experiment 2, visual aids supporting the offloading strategies observed in Experiment 1 were embedded into the maps in some conditions and not in others. The results showed that the negative effect of offloading removal exceeded the positive effect of its introduction, supporting the hypothesis that the transition from a simpler and more intuitive visual planning strategy to a more demanding incremental planning strategy entails higher strategy switching costs and challenges reconfiguration processes more than the reverse transition. More generally, the results show that the opportunity to offload cognition in complex tasks can affect the strategies used by participants and this can have cognitive consequences for the subsequent adoption of different strategies when environmental conditions change.