We’ve all found ourselves in situations where we’ve felt overwhelmed or frustrated, from attempting to follow bamboozling flat pack instructions, to being given one more job to add to your already too full plate.
The culprit here may be cognitive overload. There is only so much we can hold in our minds at once and when we are given too much we may struggle to cope.
This is also mirrored in our classrooms, where being sensitive to cognitive load can help support our students as we guide them to understand more complex knowledge and tasks.
What is cognitive load?
Cognitive load refers to how much of the working memory is being used when asked to process information or complete a task. The working memory has a limited capacity and can be taken up by:
- Intrinsic Load: the level of difficulty contained within the information or task;
- Extraneous Load: the level of difficulty contained in how the information or task is presented.
So, if the information is highly challenging and it is presented in a complex format, then the working memory can become overloaded. The information may not be understood or transferred to long term memory.
A student whose working memory is overloaded find it difficult to follow instructions or to know where to start with a task. They may appear disengaged, exasperated, or confused.
Understanding cognitive load can help us support students in our curriculum planning and in real-time classroom situations.
Intrinsic Load: A vehicle for learning
It’s important to note that intrinsic load is a good thing. We want our students to tackle complex concepts and tasks. If the intrinsic load is too low, then our students may not be sufficiently challenged and so will not learn as much.
So, when presenting our students with challenging content, we should avoid making it easier, instead focusing on optimising the intrinsic load.
The first step can be asking ourselves: Is this level of complexity right for our students at this time? Have we built understanding in our curriculum sequence leading up to this complexity?
Moving parts: Element interactivity
Challenge – and therefore intrinsic load – can also arise from tasks that have lots of parts that must be processed simultaneously. This is element interactivity.
For instance, in geography, memorising the names of natural hazards would be an example of low element interactivity. A student can learn that ‘hurricane’ is a term for a tropical storm separately to learning that a sudden violent shaking of the ground is known as an ‘earthquake’.
In contrast, above we see an example of a high element interactivity task. Students must process the location of the X and the station on the map, how to read the six-figure grid reference and understand the concept of scale. These elements must be processed together to find the answer.
For tasks with high element interactivity, we could consider breaking them down into smaller steps. These steps can then be practiced before attempting the whole task.
Practicing smaller elements can be particularly powerful as it can encourage automaticity. By practicing six-figure grid references, pupils reach a point where they can be processed with little conscious thought, thereby freeing up cognitive space for them to focus on less familiar elements.
How can we utilise retrieval to optimise intrinsic load?
A task may also provide a greater challenge if substantial background knowledge is required to access it.
In history, to explain why the USA and the USSR became involved in the Vietnam War, students must first have knowledge of the ideologies of Capitalism and Communism, the relationship between the USA and the USSR following the Second World War, as well as how Vietnam came to be divided into two halves.
We must identify what specific knowledge might be needed to access the task at hand, taking care to avoid assumptions about what knowledge students have.
It may be appropriate to provide scaffolds in the form of knowledge sheets. This could be useful if we were wanting students to focus on a skill like writing structure.
We could also plan opportunities to retrieve knowledge over time to allow for easier recall. The less effort it takes to retrieve prior learning, the more cognitive load can be focused on the new task.
Understanding that cognitive overload may be at the root of pupils’ difficulties can lead us to consider how we plan content and provide support for our students tackling challenging subject matter.
You may be interested in:
- Pages 24 to 30 of the EEF’s Cognitive Science Approaches in the Classroom: a review of the evidence, outlines the evidence surrounding cognitive load theory and the strategies that can help to support students.