Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the phenomenon whereby selectively retrieving some information impairs later recall of related, non-retrieved information, often interpreted as reflecting inhibitory control processes during memory retrieval. Recent work suggested that acute aerobic exercise performed between repeated memory tests may preserve the RIF effect over time. The present study sought to directly replicate and extend this finding using a larger and more controlled experimental design. Healthy young adults (N = 372) completed a standard category-exemplar RIF task involving selective retrieval practice followed by two final test assessments. Between the two tests, participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions that manipulated exercise exposure, duration, and order (exercise, standing control, or combined sequences). Exercise was performed on a treadmill at vigorous intensity (80

Across two experiments, we investigated the effects of cognitive offloading on prospective memory (PM). Participants performed two PM tasks, either relying on internal memory for both (Dual PM condition) or using an external reminder for one (Offload condition). Although reminders improved performance on the offloaded PM, such reminders did not improve performance on the concurrent, nonoffloaded PM. When all reminders were removed in a subsequent phase, performance on the previously offloaded PM was significantly impaired, falling below the baseline levels of performance observed for participants who never used reminders. These results suggest that although offloading can improve performance, it can also undermine the cognitive processes needed to support the learning and subsequent success of PM when reminders are no longer available. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Research has shown that searching for information online can increase a person's likelihood to search for other information online, a phenomenon known as the Internet Fixation Effect. In the current study, we conducted four experiments examining the boundary conditions of the Internet Fixation Effect and whether it can be attributed, at least in part, to how online searching affects metacognitive judgments. We replicated the Internet Fixation Effect but failed to find any evidence that it can be attributed to participants becoming less confident in what they know and can access internally. Instead, we interpret our results as suggesting that the Internet Fixation Effect may be better explained by participants becoming more habitually reliant on the Internet as a transactive memory partner within the context of an increasingly integrated and extended memory system.

Pretesting and posttesting have long been implemented in classrooms as methods of testing and improving learning. Prior research has been mixed on the relative benefits of pretesting versus posttesting, with some studies finding pretesting to be more beneficial, and others finding posttesting to be more beneficial. True/False testing is a particularly easy-to-implement method and is regularly used in classrooms. However, relatively little is known about how these tests affect learning. Three experiments address the effects of true/false pre- and posttests on learning correct information and intrusion rates of false information. We find consistent benefits of both pretesting and posttesting but significantly higher intrusion rates for posttesting relative to pretesting, a finding that persisted despite inclusion of simple True/False feedback (Experiment 2) and substantive feedback (Experiment 3). Although the difference between pretesting and posttesting intrusion rates was still significant with the addition of substantive feedback, overall intrusion rates were greatly reduced.

First-generation students can experience a cultural mismatch between their values and those that colleges and universities tend to prioritize. This mismatch can increase cognitive load, leaving fewer resources available for learning. Effective and long-lasting learning requires actively processing new information and connecting it to existing knowledge—an effort that demands significant cognitive resources. Value affirmation exercises, where students select and reflect upon values that are important to them, have shown promise in reducing cultural mismatch and improving performance on cognitive tasks. However, the impact of these exercises on the learning and recall of new information is less clear. The current study investigated whether a value affirmation exercise, completed before reading an educational passage, would improve memory recall for that passage in a sample of 400 first-generation and continuing-generation young adults, as compared to not affirming. Our results failed to provide evidence that value affirmation exercises impacted recall performance, regardless of whether participants affirmed independent values, interdependent values, or both. Given the importance and implications of this outcome for student learning, we discuss possible explanations for these null findings and suggest future directions in affirmation research.

People often save information by storing it on a computer or smartphone for future use, thus preserving cognitive economy and reducing processing demands [Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(9), 676-688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002]. Such cognitive offloading is associated with mnemonic benefits including a phenomenon known as saving-enhanced memory. [Storm, B. C., & Stone, S. M. (2015). Saving-enhanced memory: The benefits of saving on the learning and remembering of new information. Psychological Science, 26(2), 182-188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614559285] showed that when participants are prompted to study two lists of words, saving the first list (i.e., by saving the associated file onto a computer) can enhance their ability to remember the second list. Saving is believed to serve as a form of cognitive offloading, reducing cognitive load and interference from the first list, and allowing for the re-allocation of cognitive resources towards the encoding of the second list. The present study investigated whether working memory capacity (WMC) is associated with the ability to take advantage of this kind of saving-enhanced memory. Results from three experiments revealed a significant positive correlation, such that participants with high WMC demonstrated a larger saving-enhanced memory effect than participants with low WMC. This finding provides new insight into the importance of control processes in the functioning of memory, suggesting that WMC enhances a person's ability to benefit from the use of saving as a form of cognitive offloading.

Abstract The Internet is increasingly affecting the nature and dynamics of human memory. In the current chapter, recent research is reviewed, focusing on how the Internet is changing the way information is learned and remembered and the consequences of such changes on the general functioning of memory. In some ways, the Internet has the potential to expand the power of memory, providing access to more information than otherwise possible. In other ways, it has the potential to supplant or disrupt internal processes, preventing the types of flexible and constructive processes that are critical for the adaptive use and updating of memory. These and other potential consequences are discussed, especially as they relate to memory retrieval, focusing on both what is known now and some of the questions and challenges that remain to be investigated.

Saving one list of words, such as on a computer or by writing them down, can improve a person’s ability to learn and remember a second list of words that are not saved. This phenomenon, known as the saving enhanced memory effect, is typically observed by comparing the recall of nonsaved items when other items are saved versus when they are not saved. In past research, the effect has been shown to occur when participants save an entire list before learning a new list. In the current research, we examined whether the effect can be observed when participants save a subset of items within a single list. The results of two experiments confirmed that partial saving can lead to a saving enhanced memory effect, with the effect observed regardless of whether participants saved items by clicking a button on the computer or writing them out by hand. The effect was observed on an item-specific cued-recall test (Experiment 1) as well as a free recall test that did not control the order of output (Experiment 2). However, the effect size did vary as a function of how participants attempted to recall the items on the final test. Specifically, participants who initiated their output by recalling nonsaved items exhibited a significantly larger saving enhanced memory effect than those who initiated their output by reproducing saved items. Together, these findings expand our understanding of the saving enhanced memory effect and shine new light on the impacts of cognitive offloading on human memory.

Research on creative problem solving has shown that the generation of new ideas and solutions can be impeded by existing ideas and solutions. This phenomenon, known as mental fixation, has been observed in many problem-solving contexts, including the remote associates test (RAT). In the RAT, participants are presented with three cue words and are asked to come up with a fourth word related to each of the cue words. The task can be made more difficult by exposing participants to unhelpful associates that cause mental fixation before they attempt to generate the fourth word. The current chapter reviews research on the mechanisms by which people overcome the effects of mental fixation, focusing on research using the RAT, and on the potential roles of forgetting and inhibition. The results suggest that, at least under certain conditions, the ability to forget, inhibit retrieval, or stop a response can help people overcome mental fixation and thus lead to the experience of creative insight.

Digital technologies have changed the everyday use of human memory. When information is saved or made readily available online, there is less need to encode or maintain access to that information within the biological structures of memory. People increasingly depend on the Internet and various digital devices to learn and remember, but the implications and consequences of this dependence remain largely unknown. The present chapter provides an overview of research to date on memory in the digital age. It focuses in particular on issues related to transactive memory, cognitive offloading, photo taking, social media use, and learning in the classroom.

Students often take photos of slides during lectures. Research on the photo-taking-impairment effect suggests that this behavior could impair memory for lecture content, whereas other work suggests that photo-taking could cause memory benefits, at least for visually presented information. Two experiments examined the effect of photographing lecture slides on memory for information that appeared on the lecture slides as well as information only spoken aloud by the lecturer. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to take photos of some lecture slides, but not others, before being tested on memory for the material. Experiment 2 employed a yoked design in which half of the participants took photos of slides volitionally, whereas the other half were assigned to photograph the same slides nonvolitionally. Across both experiments, a photo-taking benefit was observed for on-slide information, regardless of volition condition. These findings contrasted with participants' metacognitive judgments of when taking a photo would benefit their memory.

Learners may be uncertain about whether encountered information is true. Uncertainty may encourage people to critically assess information's accuracy, serving as a kind of desirable difficulty that benefits learning. Uncertainty may also have negative effects, however, leading people to mistrust true information or to later misremember false information as true. In three experiments, participants read history statements. In one condition, all statements were true, and the participants knew it. In the other two conditions, some statements were true, and others were false. Participants were either told the statements' accuracy or they guessed the statements' accuracy prior to feedback, a manipulation we refer to as truth-checking. All participants were then tested on recalling the true information and on recognising true versus false statements. We observed a significant benefit of truth-checking in one of the three experiments, suggesting that truth-checking may have some potential to enhance learning, perhaps by inducing people to encode to-be-learned information more deeply than they would otherwise. Even so, the benefit may come at a cost-truth-checking took significantly longer than study alone, and it led to a greater likelihood of thinking false information was true, suggesting costs of truth-checking may tend to outweigh benefits.

Research has shown that using the Internet to access information can influence memory, metacognition, and how people choose to access information in the future. The current experiment sought to expand this line of work by investigating the impact of using the Internet on creative thinking. A total of 378 participants completed a version of the Alternative Uses Test in which they were asked to list five uncommon uses for each of four objects (e.g., a brick). Half of the participants did this on their own, without help from the Internet. The other half of the participants used the Internet to generate uses for the first two objects, and then generated uses for the last two objects without the Internet. Responses were considered on a number of measures (e.g., creativity, effectiveness, fluency, flexibility). Although creative performance was similar between the two conditions, some differences were observed, particularly with regard to the distributions of uses generated. For example, a subset of object uses generated by participants in the Internet condition were rarely generated by participants in the No Internet condition.

The digital environment has become increasingly pervasive in our lives, and as a result, may be profoundly impacting our cognitive processes. This special issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology brings together a collection of articles adopting a variety of methodological approaches and applied settings to examine how human cognition transforms in the context of digital environments. Some articles take a functional approach, examining how people use digital media as memory technology in relatively naturalistic contexts. Others adopt experimental methods to examine how basic cognitive processes such as memory and metacognition transform when embedded in digital activities such as Internet search or digital storage. Still others examine how design features of online media platforms shape how content from those different platforms are recalled. In all cases, the studies in this issue indicate how the integration of "onboard" cognitive resources with digital technologies transforms the nature and capacity of human cognition.

Under certain conditions, the retrieval of some information can increase the recall of other information, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced facilitation. Chan (Journal of Memory and Language 61:153–170, 2009) proposed two moderating factors to account for why retrieval causes facilitation in some situations and forgetting in others: (1) integration at the time of encoding and (2) the delay between retrieval practice and final test. Chan found a 9–11% facilitation effect when the materials were well integrated and the final test occurred after a 24-h delay. Two sets of experiments sought to replicate and extend Chan’s study by examining retrieval-induced facilitation not only following a 24-h delay but after longer delays (i.e., 1 or 2 weeks). A meta-analysis including these replications and the original experiments was also conducted. The results provide additional evidence of retrieval-induced facilitation, with no evidence that the effect varies as a function of the final delay. However, the size of the effect was found to be somewhat smaller than previously observed.

Two experiments examined the effects of cognitive offloading on a complex prospective memory task. Participants underwent a simulated telehealth examination in which they learned about dry eye disease and its treatment. They were asked to email the experimenter at 7:00 p.m., 2 days later, at which point they attempted to recall the medical information about dry eye. Participants in the offload condition were instructed to set a reminder; participants in the internal condition were not. At 7:15 p.m., all participants received an email requesting them to complete the free-recall test, allowing for an assessment of memory performance even when participants failed to email the experimenter. Participants in the offload condition significantly outperformed participants in the internal condition, both in terms of emailing the experimenter on time and in terms of completing the second phase of the experiment at all. No differences were observed regarding performance on the memory test. Results related to rehearsals, metacognitive judgments, and conscientiousness are also reported. Overall, the study provides new insight into how reminders can affect performance on a complex prospective memory task and how reminders may have the potential to be used in medical contexts to optimize patient outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Research on the pretesting effect has shown that attempting to retrieve or generate information, even when unsuccessful, can potentiate the subsequent learning and remembering of that information. In the current research, we tested the hypothesis that when information can be accessed online, people may be less likely to retrieve or generate information on their own, thus making them less likely to benefit from the pretesting effect. The results of two experiments failed to provide support for this hypothesis. Participants remembered pretested information better than non-pretested information regardless of whether they were required to attempt to retrieve answers from memory or search for the answers using Google. The results suggest that the benefits of pretesting can be observed even when people rely on the internet to answer the questions they encounter.

People often report taking photos to aid memory. Two mixed-method surveys were used to investigate participants’ reasons for taking photos, focusing specifically on memory-related reasons, which were split into two sub-types: photos taken as mementos, and photos taken as a means of offloading information. Participants reported their motivations for taking a sample of photos and then rated their recollective experience of each photographed event. Across both studies, participants reported recollecting events associated with a memento goal more vividly, more positively, and with more emotional intensity than events associated with an offloading goal. As expected, events photographed with a memento goal were also rated by participants to be more reflective of a shared memory system between the participants and the camera than were events photographed with an offloading goal. These findings suggest that people’s motivations when taking photos tend to be associated with different types of recollective experiences, as well as different judgments about where personal information is located in a blended human-camera memory system.

The photo-taking-impairment effect is observed when photographed information is less likely to be remembered than nonphotographed information. Three experiments examined whether this effect persists when multiple photos are taken. Experiment 1 used a within-subjects laboratory-based design in which participants viewed images of paintings and were instructed to photograph them once, five times, or not at all. Participants' memory was measured using a visual detail test, and the photo-taking-impairment effect was observed when participants took multiple photos. Experiment 2 examined the photo-taking-impairment effect using a between-subjects design. Participants either photographed all of the paintings they saw once, five times, or not at all, before being tested on their memory for the paintings. The photo-taking-impairment effect was observed in both photo-taking conditions relative to the no photo baseline. Experiment 3 replicated this pattern of results even when participants who took multiple photos were instructed to take five unique photos. These findings indicate that the photo-taking-impairment effect is robust, occurring even when multiple photos are taken, and after nonselective photo-taking.