The theory of cognitive load by John Sweller

A summary of John Sweller's cognitive load theory, very influential in Psychology.

Although quite old, the cognitive load theory of John Sweller is considered by many to be a revolutionary theoretical model, since it confronts the idea that the more we learn at once, the better.

The basic idea of this model is that our short-term memory has a limited capacity, which conditions the way we learn. When confronted with new knowledge, we must first acquire it properly, and then we can perform all kinds of higher cognitive processes.

His theory talks about how working memory and long-term memory interact in relation to new knowledge, and how this, if assimilated, is transformed into something he called "schemas". Let's see it below.

What is cognitive load theory?

Cognitive load theory, formulated by John Sweller in 1988, is a theoretical model that suggests that learning is most optimal when learning conditions are aligned with human cognitive architecture.. The basic idea of this theory is that when we have to learn something new, we cannot ask our brain to become familiar with this new knowledge and do other cognitively demanding processes, but we must go step by step. We must first incorporate this new knowledge, become familiar with it and then, once internalized, we can analyze it further.

This theory explains that our working memory has a limited capacity. This limited capacity is the cognitive load, which is the amount of information that our brain can store at the same time for immediate use.

Since our working memory is rather small, cognitive load theory argues that teaching methods should avoid overloading this memory with additional activities that do not directly contribute to learning. John Sweller argues that, during instructional design (that is, when designing instructional experiences to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and skills in an educational context) one must think about how to teach content in a way that reduces the cognitive load on students.. If their working memory is overloaded by overloading it with many tasks at the same time, they cannot be expected to finish the task having understood the whole subject matter or to have achieved quality learning.

Working memory and long-term memory

Human memory can be divided into several categories, two of which are working memory and long-term memory. Working memory is the memory we use when we are performing any task, in which we temporarily store the information we are working with immediately. Long-term memory, on the other hand, is composed of well-established knowledge, i.e., it is what we remember relatively well after a long period of time.

When we are studying or learning to do something, the new knowledge passes through the working memory.. The conscious processing of new information involves a certain cognitive load on the working memory. Depending on how many times we have reviewed it or if we have understood it well, this new information will be stored in the long-term memory in the form of schemas, but only if this information has been properly processed.

As we mentioned, working memory is limited. If it is cognitively overloaded, i.e., we are trying to learn many things at the same time or we are trying to do several very complex cognitive processes at the same time, we cannot process the information efficiently, we cannot process the information efficiently because we do not have enough resources to assimilate everything properly. The more things we have to learn at the same time, the more deficient our processing of novel information will be.

This is not to say that there are no people who can learn several things at once. Whether it is because they have more capacity to process more cognitive load or simply because they put in a lot of effort, there are people who can really learn something by doing several activities or studying different things at the same time. But despite this, most people, when they have to learn many things at once and they don't understand any of them, end up getting frustrated, overwhelmed and their performance is lower than desired..

Schemas

Within his theory, Sweller talks about "schemas", which are combinations of different elements that function are combinations of different elements that function as the most basic cognitive structures that form an individual's knowledge.. John Sweller formulated this idea after learning about George Miller's research on information processing, in which he showed that short-term memory was limited in terms of the number of elements that can be consciously contained and analyzed simultaneously.

In his theory, Sweller considers that these schemas, which would be the contents of long-term memory, are sophisticated structures that allow us to perceive, think and solve problems. allow us to perceive, think and solve problems instead of a group of random or more or less related data learned by Heart and unlinked. Thanks to these schemas we can handle multiple elements as one and they allow us to perform all kinds of complex cognitive processes once this information is well established in our memory.

The acquisition of new schemas and their progressive sophistication is something that happens throughout life, since we never stop learning. In fact, these same schemas can contain within them other schemas in a similar way as matrioshka dolls do. Thus, several of these knowledge structures can be assembled into a single one, allowing with experience and subsequent mastery to handle several concepts at the same time, assuming a lower cognitive load thanks to greater mastery.

In fact, it is the degree of mastery in certain knowledge and its "materialization" in mental schemas that we can differentiate between an expert and a novice.. The novice has not yet acquired the schemas of a given knowledge, i.e. he has yet to learn them, while the expert already has them well established. The expert can compare and analyze them in depth with relatively little effort, the novice cannot do these mental processes without investing great energy and cognitive resources, since he has not yet mastered them and needs to make a great effort to even understand them.

Example of cognitive overload

In order to better understand what the cognitive load theory says let's look at an example in which two cases are presentedOne with cognitive overload and the other in which it is known how to avoid this situation, which could perfectly well occur in any classroom of any institute.

Let's imagine that we are in a philosophy class. The teacher explains at the beginning of the course that one of the objectives of the course is for students to be able to critically examine various philosophical systems, having a broad overview of the history of Western philosophy by the end of the course and having had the possibility to learn about the main currents of thought from classical Greece to the 21st century.

Case 1

At the very beginning of the course, the teacher tells his students that they should start by analyzing the theories of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, authors that they will find already explained in the book. The teacher tells them that he is not going to explain them in great detail in class because he considers that they are so famous that he expects his students to understand them on their own. The teacher encourages his students to be responsible for their own learning by learning about these philosophers.The teacher encourages his students to be responsible for their own learning by learning about these philosophers as they analyze and compare them.

However, the teacher has overestimated the knowledge and ability of his students. He thinks that the students will be able to quickly analyze the theories of these three philosophers because he assumes that they have already internalized their schools of thought, even though this is not the case. The students, not having mastered the philosophy of these three thinkers, are faced with a truly titanic task and, moreover, they do not know very well how to study them.

To begin with, they read the three authors' topics without devoting adequate study to them, since the teacher has insisted that they compare these three philosophers, not that they learn them. As a result, students read the three topics and pretend to make a comparative table with the three philosophers.The problem is that at the end of the reading they have the feeling that they have read exactly the same thing, they have not understood anything and they have to go over and over to see what similarities and differences they find. The problem is that in order to compare the three philosophers we must first get to know them.

The overload occurs because in the working memory of these students we have to learn, or at least know, the life, work and philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle while, at the same time, they try to do such a complex process as comparing them. They cannot because they have not done the first step, which is to have created a complex scheme for each of these three authors, and they cannot compare anything in conditions.

Case 2

The teacher begins the class by explaining the philosophy of Socrates, mentioning his entire life, work and thought, making sure that the students have learned about him and that they demonstrate this by doing a paper on the life of this philosopher. In the next two topics the same will be done, but explaining Plato and Aristotle. Once seen and understood the three philosophers knowing their lives, work and, especially, their points of view, it is time to compare them..

Learning the philosophy of each of the three was the first step, that is, to create a mental schema. As they have progressed through the syllabus, the students have been internalizing the postulates of the three classical philosophers, having a mental scheme for each of them. At first, when they were learning about the life of Plato, for example, this new knowledge was in the working memory, implying a certain cognitive load. However, since this load was relatively low and easy to handle, they were able to process it and move it into long-term memory.

Now that the students know about the philosophy of the three philosophers they can easily compare it. Unlike case 1, in this case the comparison involves less cognitive load since they have mastery over the thought of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the cognitively demanding task now being to put them together and compare them, not to learn them since that is already done.

Implications of Cognitive Load Theory

Every teacher wants his or her students to learn complex ideas and to know how to use them thoughtfully and creatively, indeed, this is the goal of education. However, teachers must be aware that everything takes time and that in order to perform a cognitively demanding task such as problem solving and deep reflection first you have to know what you are going to analyze..

One must start from the most basic definitions and ideas and progressively move to more complex ones, developing along the way schemas that, once well acquired, can be analyzed and compared.

Cognitive load theory provides a general framework for how learning should be fostered and has many implications for the design of educational curricula. Those who are in charge of organizing educational content, whether they are teachers, educational psychologists or any other professional in the educational sciences, must take into account that the learner must first be familiarized with the new content. The new knowledge must be given structure and, once it is well elaborated and settled, move on to more complex cognitive processes such as reflective and deep analysis.

The theory of cognitive load supports models of explicit teaching, since these models tend to be in tune with how human brains learn most effectively.In explicit models of instruction, the teacher shows students very clearly what they have to do, how to do it, and what steps to follow, rather than expecting students to do it in a very clear way. In explicit models of instruction, the teacher shows students very clearly what to do, how to do it, and what steps to take, rather than expecting students to figure out the steps on their own or to actively discover new information.

Naturally, these models have their points of criticism, such as neglecting the fact that students can play an active role in their own learning, discovering on their own and using creativity and inventiveness to find new solutions to all kinds of problems. However, it is true that there are certain subjects and lessons in which it is preferable to break down the learning into smaller, more digestible steps to facilitate its acquisition.

Knowledge and critical thinking

One of the most interesting aspects of the theory is that one must first "know things" in order to be able to think critically about them. Information can be processed through two processes: knowledge acquisition and problem solving. These two processes are fundamental to learning, but they must be done separately so as not to overdo it. must be done separately so as not to overload our working memory and to avoid poor information processing..

Sweller's model is critical of teaching in which learning through problem solving is abused, especially if the subject matter related to the problem to be solved has not been learned or familiarized beforehand.

It is common that the acquisition of knowledge and the resolution of a given problem end up overlapping in this style of teaching, causing the student to not learn anything or know how to solve the problem at hand.

Problem solving occupies a wide brain bandwidth, so to speak.so to speak. What is meant by this is that solving a problem involves a high cognitive load, a load which will have to compete with another load, that of acquiring new knowledge if it has not been learned. If certain schemas have not been acquired, it is very difficult to carry out complex processes with them.

Bibliographical references:

• Sweller, J., van Merrienboer, J., & Paas, F. (1998). Cognitive architecture and instructional design. Educational Psychology Review, 10, 251-296.
• Sweller, J. (2003) Evolution of Human Cognitive Architecture, In The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 43. Brian Ross (eds.). San Diego: Academic Press.