Reducing the Perceived Reliability of an External Store Reduces Susceptibility to External Store Manipulation.
- April Pereira, Cognitive Psychology/University of Waterloo/CaNB Lab, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
- Megan Kelly, Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
- Evan Risko, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
AbstractOffloading cognition to external stores is practiced ubiquitously in daily life (e.g., counting on fingers, writing lists), yet is a relatively new area of investigation within cognitive science. Previous experiments have assessed the benefits and downfalls, including participants’ lowered memory for offloaded information that is no longer available (Gardony et al., 2013; Sparrow et al., 2011). In addition, when offloading, individuals appear susceptible to manipulations of their external store (Risko et al., 2019). Here we report an experiment investigating how the perceived reliability of an external store affects individuals’ susceptibility to manipulation of that store. Consistent with previous research, results suggest that the majority of participants do not notice an item inserted into their external store. However, once cued to this event, individuals do become more likely to subsequently notice a manipulation of their external store. Implications of this research for our understanding of distributed memory systems will be discussed.