Using reminders can make it easier to remember future tasks, but relying on them may also reduce the brain’s opportunity to learn how to remember on its own, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Most people use digital reminders every day. Smartphones, smartwatches, and calendar alerts help us remember appointments and deadlines, reducing the mental effort needed to keep track of future intentions. Psychologists refer to this strategy as cognitive offloading—transferring some of the brain’s workload to an external aid. Previous research has shown that reminders improve immediate performance, but much less is known about whether they influence our ability to remember independently in the future.
The researchers wanted to investigate whether reminders simply provide temporary assistance or whether they also change the learning processes that normally strengthen prospective memory—the ability to remember to carry out intended actions later.
Led by Craig Fellers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the research team conducted two online experiments. In the first, 130 undergraduate students took part, with data from 108 participants included after applying predefined exclusion criteria.
Participants completed an ongoing word task while simultaneously remembering two prospective memory tasks (such as pressing the spacebar when they saw a word with three syllables). In one condition, participants remembered both tasks using their own memory. In the offloading condition, one of the memory tasks was supported by a highly noticeable reminder displayed in bold text, while the other still had to be remembered internally.
After completing the first phase, all participants repeated the task again, but this time without any reminders, allowing the researchers to examine whether earlier reminder use affected later memory performance. The researchers then conducted a second experiment with 280 participants using a different version of the task to replicate the findings.
As expected, reminders greatly improved performance while they were available. Participants almost never forgot the task supported by the reminder. However, the researchers found no evidence that removing one memory burden allowed participants to perform better on the other memory task they still had to remember themselves. In fact, in the second experiment, when the reminders were made even more explicit, performance on the non-offloaded memory task actually worsened.
The most important finding emerged after the reminders disappeared. Participants who had previously relied on reminders remembered significantly fewer future tasks than those who had never used reminders. Their performance was even lower than the baseline level achieved by participants who had relied solely on their own memory throughout the study. This suggests that they had learned less rather than simply losing the benefit of reminders.
The authors concluded: “While reminders can be a powerful tool for ensuring immediate task completion, they are not cognitively neutral. They can undermine the very practice required to develop durable, internal memory skills, suggesting a fundamental trade-off between immediate convenience and long-term learning and skill acquisition.”
The findings fit with a broader idea in psychology known as desirable difficulties. Although remembering without assistance is more mentally demanding, that extra effort may strengthen memory over time. By removing much of this effort, reminders may prevent people from developing stronger internal memory skills.
The authors caution that the study was conducted online using university students, so the results may not fully reflect how people use reminder apps in everyday life. For instance, older adults may rely on offloading differently than students. The researchers also examined relatively short-term memory performance, leaving open the question of whether long-term reliance on digital reminders produces similar effects.
The study, “Offloading Reduces Prospective Memory Learning,” was authored by Craig Fellers and Benjamin C. Storm.