SUMMARY

The DCDI team built out this literature review to help clarify our goals for and approach to this project. This review is not an exhaustive summary of the entire catalog of cognitive science; rather, it is a selection of the research most relevant to the DCDI effort.

This literature review supports a series examining the effects digital technologies have on the following cognitive processes: “Memory,” “Attention,” and “Reasoning.” The broader report series includes three additional papers looking at some of the society-level cognitive and democratic impacts of technology, titled: “Modulating Trust,” “Shortcutting Critical Thinking,” and “Exploiting Emotions.” We have also compiled a capstone report, “Rewired: How Digital Technologies Shape Cognition.”