Impact Of Project Difficulty And Score On Cognitive Offloading Decision

With the continuous integration of technology and life,the convenience of people using smart phones,smart watches and other external devices to store information has been greatly improved.A large number of studies have found that in order to reduce their own cognitive load,people tend to adopt cognitive offloading strategy.Cognitive offloading refers to a strategy in which individuals use physical behavior to change the way information is processed in order to reduce the loss of cognitive resources(E.F.Risko & Gilbert,2016).For example,people use mobile phones and notebooks to store information and set reminders to help them remember future action plans.In recent years,researchers have deeply studied and discussed the influencing factors and cognitive mechanisms of cognitive offloading decisions,and obtained some research results.For example,in studying the influencing factors of cognitive offloading decisions,previous scholars focused on the characteristics of the learning material itself,such as the difficulty of the project.The characteristics of the learning materials themselves are of course an important factor influencing learners to make learning decisions.However,in addition to this,in self-regulated learning research,item scores,learning time,and the number of items saved are also important factors that affect learners' learning decisions.Whether these factors affect cognitive offloading,that is,whether learners will regulate cognitive offloading based on learning time,project scores,and the number of preservations,is currently lacking in relevant research.In addition,in the discussion of the cognitive mechanism of cognitive offloading,researchers have proposed various theories from different perspectives to explain how people decide whether to use cognitive offloading.Among the more influential theories are minimal memory theory and metacognitive theory: Minimal memory theory believes that the individual's cognitive system habitually minimizes the need for memory(Ballard,Hayhoe,Pook,& Rao,1996).Therefore,it will rely on external devices to memorize information as much as possible,so as to reduce the consumption of memory tasks to its own internal resources.Metacognition theory believes that cognitive offloading depends on individuals' metacognitive monitoring based on experience and beliefs.It shows that the stronger the learner's self-confidence in their future performance,the less cognitive offloading is used.Inspired by the different interpretations of cognitive offloading by the two theories,this study will explore the effects of project difficulty and score on cognitive offloading decisions and the cognitive mechanism of cognitive offloading strategies under different learning conditions through three experiments.Experiment 1 explores the impact of project difficulty and score on cognitive offload decision under fixed-step learning conditions.The experimental material is a word pair composed of clue words and target words(eg: language—sweater,winter—snowflake).The experiment adopted 2(project difficulty: easy vs.difficult)× 2(project score: high score vs.low score)in-subject research design.The dependent variables are word pair retention rate,help seeking rate and academic performance.It was found that the difficulty of the project significantly affected the utilization rate of the subjects 'cognitive uninstallation,and the subjects' cognitive uninstallation of the difficult projects was significantly higher than that of the easy projects.The project score has no significant effect on the cognitive offload utilization rate of the subjects.In addition,the rate of seeking help for difficult items was significantly higher than that for easy items,and the score for easy items was significantly higher than that for difficult items.The project score does not affect cognitive offloading.The reason for this situation may be that under the condition of fixed pace learning,individuals may ignore the clue of project score under time pressure,so that the project score does not appear to the individual.The impact of cognitive offloading.Therefore,in Experiment 2,the researchers adopted self-paced learning to further explore the impact of project difficulty and score on cognitive offloading decisions.It was found that the difficulty of the project significantly affected the utilization rate of the subjects 'cognitive uninstallation,and the subjects' cognitive uninstallation of the difficult projects was significantly higher than that of the easy projects.The project score has a significant effect on the cognitive offload utilization rate of the subjects,and the subjects' cognitive offload on the high-score items is significantly higher than the low-score items.These results indicate that when learning time is sufficient,individuals will pay more attention to score cues.That is,individuals can feel the importance of high-score projects for their own achievements,so they provide guarantees for achieving better achievements through preservation.Experiment 3 further explores the cognitive mechanism of cognitive offloading.In the third experiment,the researchers will no longer limit the number of individual project preservation,and increase the meta-cognition monitoring link for individuals in the learning stage to investigate the minimal memory theory and meta-cognition theory of cognitive offloading.It was found that the difficulty of the project significantly affected the utilization rate of the subjects' cognitive uninstallation,and the cognitive uninstallation of the difficult project was significantly higher than that of the easy project.The item score has a significant effect on the cognitive offload utilization rate of the subjects.The subjects' cognitive offload on the high-score items is significantly higher than that of the low-score items.One-way analysis of variance was performed on the number of times the projects were saved in the three experiments.It was found that there was no significant difference,indicating that the minimal memory theory of cognitive offloading is not supported.Through intermediary analysis,it is found that metacognitive monitoring plays a partial intermediary role in project difficulty and cognitive offloading.However,metacognitive monitoring does not play an intermediary role in project scores and cognitive offloading.The results of Experiment 3 partially support the metacognitive theory of cognitive offloading,indicating that the cognitive offloading decision is based on the individual's metacognitive monitoring of internal and external resources.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:1.Project difficulty affects individual cognitive offloading decision;2.With sufficient learning time,the project score will also affect the individual's cognitive offloading decision;3.The individual has no tendency to use cognitive offloading decision;4.Part of the reason individuals use cognitive offloading decision is based on metacognitive monitoring.