The Benefits of Saving on New Learning
Social Sciences
PSYC 195a-195b: Senior Thesis
Instead of personally remembering every piece of digital information that we come across, we tend to store information onto computers for later reference. This study investigates how human cognition is influenced by the ability to offload memory onto external devices such as computers. Specifically, it asks whether saving our digital material provides us with better resources to remember material that is encountered in the future. This question is explored in a series of three experiments that illustrate the impact of computer fallibility and varying list length on memory for lists of words learned after the saving and not saving of prior lists. Undergraduate psychology students were recruited and ran in a natural computer environment using normal computer materials. Experiment 1 results show that saving material before learning new material significantly improves memory for new material compared to when not saving before learning new material. Experiment 2 and 3 results show that perceiving the saving process as unreliable and limiting the size of saved material eliminates memory benefits for new material. These results suggest that saving exists as a convenient way to offload knowledge, making it easier for us to remember new information that we come across.
