Theses and Dissertations

ORCID

0009-0005-7772-3973

Advisor

Soares, Julia

Committee Member

Moss, Jarrod

Committee Member

Jaeger, Allison

Committee Member

Whitlock, Jonathan

Committee Member

Finley, Jason

Date of Degree

8-12-2026

Original embargo terms

Immediate Worldwide Access

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Applied Psychology (Cognitive Science)

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Psychology

Abstract

Learners use a variety of strategies to engage with real-world learning material. One such strategy is cognitive offloading: the reliance on external stores to alleviate internal cognitive demand. Past research has found that learners remember less when they study with the expectation of access to an external store during a subsequent test relative to when they study without that expectation. One proposed theory is the study effort hypothesis: when learners expect access to an external store, they reduce their encoding effort based on the belief that their internal memory of the information will be less important when they have access to the passage. However, this past work has focused exclusively on memory representations. In real-world settings, understanding in a subject of study requires more than memorizing information. For example, when reading text passages, learners must also use comprehension processes to build a representation and integrate new information with past information to form a useful cognitive model of the material. Additionally, learners may adjust their reliance on external stores based on various factors, such as the type of material, reading ability, and their familiarity with the material. In the present study, participants were presented with a series of passages for which they were tested using memory and comprehension questions, for half the passages, they were told they would have access to the passage during test. In reality, access was not provided for the final passages, regardless of expectancy. In Experiment 1, which used expository passages about scientific concepts, learning was worse for information which participants expected access to, relative to information they did not expect access to. This was the case for both memory and comprehension questions. In Experiment 2, which used narrative short stories, learning was again worse for information which participants expected access to relative to information they did not; however, this time, the effect differed based on question type. Expecting access to the passage impaired memory but did not impair comprehension learning. In both experiments, the effect of store expectancy on test performance was mediated by participant reading time, providing strong evidence for the study effort hypothesis.

Sponsorship (Optional)

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 2240254

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