Cognitive Load 101
I work at Feedzai as an Engineering Manager on some of our amazing teams. Here at our company we really strive for having a learning culture as one of our prime principles. As such, we are encouraged each year to invest a predefined budget in a set of learning channels, such as conferences, courses, and any other way we like.
Aligned with this principle, this past year I have decided to try my best at the GoTo Conference in Copenhagen where I was able to attend several fantastic sessions. One in particular was from Fahran Wallace where she talked about “Brain on software development” and how the brain behaves with our line of work and specific cognitive behaviors we go through every day without even noticing.
As a consequence of this, one of the matters that really triggered my mind was around cognitive load. I felt a lot of people were not very aware (well, I wasn’t) or even interested, but this could be a game-changer in helping people in their daily jobs. I thought “hmmm, why not give a brief introduction on the subject?”
Let’s pick up the learning helmet and push…
So you constantly struggle with your mind — why it can’t learn more stuff. Or you even feel frustrated about why are you not assimilating that specific information.
We all have passed through these kind of moments, but NOW we can point the finger at something… ah, it feels so good to blame that hidden troll. Well, meet Cognitive Load theory.
By definition, Cognitive Load describes how the human mind processes new information. It states that we have a very limited capacity to process new information.
An example of low interactivity can be seen when learning a new language, as in, we can learn the meaning of each word one at a time. For high interactivity we can use the example of driving a car where we need to manage multiple interacting elements — gear changing, looking at the traffic, maintaining road position — all at once until it all becomes automated.
The theory is defined in 3 types of load:
- Intrinsic
- Extraneous
- Germane
Let’s dive into each, so you can better understand how the whole thing works.
Intrinsic load
The 1st type is the intrinsic load, which refers to the inherent difficulty of a task for a particular learner. It is determined by the number of existing elements, and the level of interactivity between them.
Given that Working Memory (WM aka. short-term memory) is limited from 3 to 7 elements interacting at one time, but long-term-memory (LTM) is unlimited. The more elements our learner holds in LTM schemas, the easier the learning task will be, because WM is only limited when dealing with new information. So a task will have an intrinsic load affected by the complexity of the task, the expertise, and also the WM capacity of the learner.
Extraneous load
The second type is extraneous load. This is the additional load that is imposed by poorly designed instructional material. It includes things like your favorite social network nonsense memes, background music, or even unnecessary jokes. All of these kind of unnecessary details have impact in the cognitive capacity that an individual has.
It also imposes extraneous load when the learning material or the teacher uses poor fonts, speaks in a monotone, or uses complicated vocabulary. It’s anything included that does not directly contribute to the learning goal.
The 3rd type is germane load (aka. generative load or even LTM). This is the mental capacity that is directed toward integrating the new information with the existing knowledge. This is what we aim to encourage. One way to think of it is, when the mind goes “Oh I get it, that’s like…” and links the new information to some past knowledge. And that’s the moment when you learned something.
How these things add up
These 3 types of load add up in order, meaning that if the occupied space of the first two is too large, there is not enough room for the third due to cognitive overload. And no, there is no Garbage Collection here, you JVM nerds! :D
If we overload the brain, we leave no room for the valuable thoughts to occur. We can also directly encourage such thoughts in our design by including prompts like “Remember when we studied the same idea last week?”
So the aim of instructional design is:
- To manage how complicated a learning task is for our students — Intrinsic load,
- Reduce distracting material — Extraneous load,
- And encourage Germane load.
I hope this article was beneficial and can help with different ways information is presented in the learning process and will help you learn things more effectively in the future.
Within our teams at Feedzai, this kind of method is already being applied to guarantee that information is not sufficient enough on its own, but that our colleagues assimilate and learn more effectively in order to improve the way they do their jobs.
