Page No:275-284
Nahana Parveen K and Rajeev Kumar N
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala.
This study investigated the relationships between cognitive offloading, working memory
(WM) capacity, and metamemory in a sample of 398 emerging adults. Participants
completed tasks designed to measure visuospatial and phonological offloading, along
with standardised tests for visual (N-back) and auditory (Digit Span) WM capacity and
a measure of metamemory (Personal Beliefs about Memory Instrument). The results
revealed a significant inverse relationship between WM capacity and the tendency to
offload. Specifically, individuals with higher visual WM capacity showed a small but
significant negative correlation with visuospatial offloading (r = -0.18), while those with
higher auditory WM capacity showed a much stronger negative correlation with
phonological offloading (r = -0.609). This suggests that offloading is a resource-driven
process, where those with lower internal cognitive resources are more likely to rely on
external aids. In contrast, metamemory played a negligible role in predicting offloading
behaviour. The correlations between metamemory and both visuospatial and phonological
offloading were either extremely small or statistically non-significant. This finding
challenges the hypothesis that offloading is a deliberate, metacognitively guided strategy,
instead suggesting that it may be a more automatic response to perceived cognitive
demand. The study concludes that while WM capacity is a key predictor of cognitive
offloading, an individual’s conscious awareness of their own memory abilities plays a
minimal role. These findings highlight the importance of cognitive resources over
metacognitive awareness in the decision to offload.