Investigating Cognitive Offloading of Screenshots

Authors: Nicole Puig, Sasha Gozan-Keck, Olivia Mangano

Field of Study: Social Sciences

Faculty Mentors: Deanne Westerman, Sophia Fabrizio

Easel: 51

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: The photo impairment effect is the finding that memory for photographed information is worse than for information that is just viewed. Recent research has extended this finding to stimuli that are screenshotted on a phone or computer (Lurie et al., submitted). One potential explanation for the impairment is cognitive offloading, which is a reliance on an external memory store for information (Henkel, 2014; Lurie & Westerman, 2021; Lurie et al., submitted). Experiment one examined if saving images provided a compensatory benefit to source memory. Participants displayed a deficit in both item and source memory, suggesting no cognitive benefits. Experiment two sought to examine if offloading could be encouraged if participants anticipated a long delay before a memory test. The results showed a photo impairment effect that did not depend on the perceived delay before the test. Overall, the experiments did not offer support for cognitive offloading in the photo impairment effect.