Strategic offloading: How the value of to‐be‐remembered information influences offloading decision‐making

Abstract We examined potentially selective offloading decisions when the external store has a limited capacity and how the surprising unavailability of offloaded information influences subsequent offloading decision‐making and memory. In three experiments, learners were presented with to‐be‐remembered words paired with point values counting towards their scores if recalled and were allowed to offload some words. Experiment 1 included only positively valued words, Experiment 2 included some negatively valued words, and Experiment 3 included only positively valued words but some extremely high‐value words. Learners selectively offloaded high‐value words (an ideal strategy if the external store is more reliable than memory) but were also selective in their memory for not‐offloaded words. However, when offloaded words were surprisingly unavailable, learners frequently forgot high‐value words, illustrating the potential dangers of offloading. Thus, offloading decisions should depend on the reliability of the external store, memory abilities, and the variability of the value of to‐be‐remembered information.