External reminders dramatically reduce forgetting of delayed intentions¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Participants using their own memory forgot about 45% of intentions versus around 5% using external reminders, an almost order-of-magnitude reduction. → Gilbert 2023

Evidence¶

Gilbert 2023¶

Gilbert, S. J., Boldt, A., Sachdeva, C., Scarampi, C., & Tsai, P.-C. (2023). Outsourcing Memory to External Tools: A Review of 'Intention Offloading'. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02139-4

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports, citing the optimal reminders experiments of Gilbert et al. (2020), that 'using reminders reduced the forgetting rate by almost an order of magnitude', citing Jones et al. (2021) as further support. No effect size is printed.

"participants in Gilbert et al. (2020) had a forgetting rate of about 45% when using their own memory but only around 5% using external reminders; in other words, using reminders reduced the forgetting rate by almost an order of magnitude"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Older adults show reduced reminder bias relative to objective need despite setting more reminders — related
• Developmental change in offloading reflects metacognitive control, not knowledge — related
• Individuals show a systematic positive reminder bias, setting more reminders than optimal — related
• Effort avoidance contributes to reminder overuse beyond metacognitive error — related
• Feedback interventions show phase-specific effects: advice feedback reduces reminder bias, but ranking feedback alters beliefs without increasing offloading — related
• Task accuracy is far higher with reminders than internal memory and is unaffected by reminder framing — related
• Metacognitive confidence triggers intention offloading independently of objective memory need — related
• The more underconfident participants are about their memory abilities, the larger their reminder bias, regardless of framing — related