UCLA

The present dissertation investigated how goals and information importance influence remembering and forgetting processes. Results revealed that individuals strategically forget less important information to optimize memory for valuable information. Moreover, the use of external memory aids (i.e., offloading) is influenced by the objective and subjective value of the information. When information differs in objective value, people are most likely to offload high-value items but if the external store is unreliable, people often forget this valuable information. In contrast, if the information differs in subjective value, people use memory for important information. I also observed that metacognition and other cognitive abilities impact optimal offloading. Learners may strategically forget less important information to maximize memory for valuable information, which suggests a deliberate decision-making process regarding what information to offload or forget. Similarly, making decisions about what information to highlight may also involve a form of offloading, where learners decide to externalize or emphasize certain information by highlighting it for later reference, while potentially offloading or neglecting other information by not highlighting it. Moreover, metacognition, which involves monitoring and controlling one’s own cognitive processes, can be reactive, meaning that decisions about what information to remember and forget can influence what is ultimately remembered. However, I did not find evidence that requiring learners to choose what information to highlight from a passage of to-be-tested content improves comprehension compared to traditional highlighting methods. Lastly, I explored the relationship between value-directed remembering and desirable difficulties, which are cognitive strategies that can enhance learning and retention. However, the spacing effect, generation effect, and testing effect, which are known to benefit memory overall, did not interact with the value of the information being learned. Overall, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of how goals, information importance, offloading, metacognition, and desirable difficulties influence memory processes. The findings highlight the complex interplay between objective and subjective value, external memory aids, metacognitive decision-making, and cognitive strategies in shaping memory performance. These findings have implications for educational settings, where understanding how learners prioritize and remember information of different values can inform instructional strategies and enhance learning outcomes.