Graduation Year
2021
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Linguistics and Cognitive Science
Reader 1
Professor Laura Johnson
Reader 2
Professor Brian Keeley
Reader 3
Professor Charles Kamm
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2021 Gloria J Choi
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore the internet-extended mind through both philosophical and psychological lenses in order to investigate the questions “To what extent is the mind extended onto the internet and, more generally, outside our bodies?” and “How will an increasingly internet-extended brain change the ways in which humans communicate, remember, and behave?”. First, I introduce the idea of a mind that extends out into the world, instead of lying solely in the brain. Then, I outline existing research that introduces the challenges and implications of an internet-extended mind in an ever-changing internet landscape. Next, I discuss how the internet is already changing human memories and behaviors. Lastly, I pose the research question, “Is accuracy of recall better when receiving information about someone through a Facebook page or through face-to-face speech?” and conduct an experiment. In this experiment, all participants experienced a face-to-face and a Facebook condition. The face-to-face condition consisted of a video of an actor who introduced herself as either Taylor or Fran. The Facebook condition consisted of a video screen recording of a Facebook webpage for either Taylor or Fran. After the participant saw both conditions, they were given a mental math distractor task and then recalled the information through a survey. The results corroborated my hypotheses that overall recall would be better for the Facebook condition than the face-to-face condition and that the participants who were more exposed to Facebook in their personal time would have better recall than other participants. I conclude this paper with reflections on the results favoring recall for the Facebook condition and what it means for human minds if information can be stored more accurately on a phone than in the brain.
Recommended Citation
Choi, Gloria, "The Internet-Extended Mind: The Psychological Ramifications and Philosophical Implications of Cognitive Offloading" (2021). Scripps Senior Theses. 1675.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1675
Included in
Applied Behavior Analysis Commons, Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, Theory and Philosophy Commons
