CAN WE MANAGE OUR COGNITIVE LOAD?

The need for a bridge between basic learning theories and educational “outcomes has long been discussed. In order to build a bridge between learners and the learning, a comprehensible, well planned and organized material design are needed in foreign language teaching. This bridge is connected by our working memory where it takes us   o the theory developed by John Sweller in the late 1980s named as “Cognitive Load Theory”. 

Cognitive Load Theory builds upon the widely accepted model of human information processing. Information from your sensory memory passes into your working memory, where it is either processed or discarded. Working memory can generally hold between five and nine items (or chunks) of information at any one time.

When our brain processes information, it also categorizes that information and moves it into long-term memory in which it is stored in knowledge structures called "schemas." These organize information according to how we use it and it can be exemplified with schemas such as cat, dog, animal and mammal. We also have behavioral schemas for actions like catching a ball, driving a car, ordering food and so forth. There schemas are reinforced by practice and the more practiced, the more we can automatize them.   The amount of information processing depend upon one’s performance in ask (Reif, 2010).  Part of our mind that processes what we are currently busy with doing and often forced to split attention disparate sources of information such as texts, diagrams and pictures. These sources of information refers to multimedia learning that is defined learning from printed or spoken words and visuals such as videos, illustrations or animations.

Earlier Piaget defined the schemas in our working memory and how we perceive an information by chunking or grouping them as like ten digit numbers and magic seven 7+/-2  that refers to nuber of objects  an average human can hold  in short term memory by Miller (1956). According to the CLT, there are three sources of cognitive load; instinsic, germane, and extraneous. The lating French Word “Germane” is the load used in forming new schemas and it means fitting, and relevant.  Whereas, extraneous load refers to the mental sources that do not contribute learning and automation. On the other hand, working memory gets overloaded and it has trouble in learning because of same verbal or semantic decoding process delivered in two different ways. This process is called redundancy effect as like presenting the same visual with its written instruction on the slide and repeating the same sentence verbally.

Next, the imagination effect occurs when learners imagining a procedure or concept perform better on a subsequent test than learners studying rather than imagining. Cognitive load theory explains this result as information is more likely to be transferred from working to long-term memory under imagination conditions. 

In our classes, there’s also the danger of presenting students with unnecessary or redundant information. Once students are more knowledgeable, that explicit guidance is unnecessary and it interferes with further development of expertise, and so it should be faded out to be replaced by problem-solving.  This method of transitioning from initially providing lots of guidance, then moving towards problem-solving is known as the ‘guidance fading effect’. All those effects have many impacts over learning and giving meaningful instruction with a well-designed resources or lesson plans increase learners’ success and motivation rather than being blind or lost during that learning process. So what do you think about the pictures below? Is it meaningful to insert that visual below about "Kids are going back to school" on a slide presentation on "welcome back to school"? Or which diagram in the second image give us a clear instruction about theme "Middle ear"?

References

•Sweller, J. (1994). Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design. Learning and Instruction, 4, 295-312

•Sweller, J. (1999). Instructional design in technical areas. Camberwell, Australia:ACER Press.

•Baddeley, A.D. (2000) Working memory: The interface between memory and cognition. In: M. Gazzaniga (Ed.) Cognitive Neuroscience: A Reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. pp 292-304.

•Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (1996). Cognitive load while learning to use a computer program. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 151-170.