In situations (over-)taxing working memory (WM), offloading cognitive burdens and operations onto an interactive technological device could be key to success. Technological support allowing external storage and manipulation of information like in WM could offer even greater benefits in these demanding situations, where reducing WM burdens is essential for task performance, than in less demanding situations. However, the relationship between technological offloading support and WM load has not been systematically examined. This study (N = 138) therefore investigated the effectiveness of self-directed structuring functions allowing the manipulation of information on a multi-touch table to support complex decision-making under induced low and high WM load (contrasted with no self-structuring support). Individuals equipped with self-structuring demonstrated deeper information processing irrespective of load. Measures for updating of mental representations showed partially higher effectiveness of self-structuring support under high load. Descriptive statistics for correct decisions could show self-structuring helping to maintain or even improve performance especially under high WM load, while corresponding inference statistics could not. Thus, results for correct decisions were inconclusive. Detailed process analyses showed that specific structuring strategies rather than overall structuring amount were related to better decisions and point out possibilities to increase self-structuring effectiveness.

在使工作记忆（WM）负担过多的情况下，将认知负担和操作卸载到交互式技术设备上可能是成功的关键。像在WM中一样，允许在外部存储和处理信息的技术支持在这些要求苛刻的情况下可以提供更大的好处，与要求不那么苛刻的情况相比，减轻WM负担对于任务执行至关重要。但是，技术卸载支持与WM负载之间的关系尚未得到系统地检查。这项研究（ñ = 138）因此研究了自我指导的结构化功能的有效性，该功能允许在多点触摸表上操纵信息以支持在诱导的WM负载过高和过低的情况下做出复杂的决策（与之相反，没有自我结构化支持）。具备自我构造能力的个人无论负载如何，都表现出更深入的信息处理。更新心理表现的措施表明，在高负荷下自我构造支持的有效性较高。正确决策的描述性统计数据可能显示出自我结构化，从而有助于维持甚至改善性能，尤其是在高WM负载下，而相应的推理统计数据则无法。因此，正确决策的结果尚无定论。