Cognitive Load - Science topic

I believe that if a person remains in a constant state of anxiety, this will eventually lead to exhaustion related to the effort exerted by the brain, and thus the individual will reach a state of apathy. My regards.

The perspectives, experiences, and challenges of English Department instructors in higher education using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Tripoli, or any similar context, can be multifaceted. Here’s a detailed exploration:

Perspectives

Experiences

Challenges

Strategies for Overcoming Challenges

In summary, while AI offers significant potential to transform English department instruction in higher education in Tripoli, it also presents various challenges that need to be addressed through careful planning, training, and ethical considerations. By leveraging AI thoughtfully, instructors can enhance the learning experience while navigating the complexities of their unique educational context.

Anwar Abdullatif El-Dalli

Dear Doctor

Go To

[Abstract

This research examines the influence of multilingualism on cognitive processes and language development in kids attending public sector schools in Sialkot, Pakistan. The study mainly examines the impact of varying degrees of language competency in multilingual environments on cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and problem-solving, as well as the overall linguistic growth of pupils. The study employs a qualitative research technique, using in-depth interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations to collect data from students, instructors, and parents. This method enables a thorough comprehension of the subjective experiences and environmental elements that impact cognitive and language development in a bilingual educational setting. Proficient learners have enhanced cognitive abilities as a result of multilingualism. Multilingual education enhances the cognitive abilities of young individuals, including their memory, attention, and problem-solving skills. A wide-ranging lexicon and a solid grasp of grammar are other indicators of rapid linguistic progress. The use of educational multilingualism enhances cognitive abilities and language skills, necessitating a complete approach to language training. The results indicate that having a balanced proficiency in many languages might enhance cognitive and linguistic abilities, preparing children for success on a global scale.]

Zeeshan Haider Cooperative learning pedagogy is a good approach to adopt and implement relevant to your question.

Dear Mr. Nambiar!

You raised an important point - how to teach science visually simply to children. The solution here is a case - and context-dependent one: what kind of subject you teach (math, psychology, biology, etc.) and the culture of the children they are educated along with (parents, family relations, school community):

1) Wiebels K, Moreau D. Dynamic Data Visualizations to Enhance Insight and Communication Across the Life Cycle of a Scientific Project. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. 2023;6(3). doi:10.1177/25152459231160103, Open access:

2) Knox, J., Kontorovich, I. Growing research groves to visualize young students’ learning in small groups. Math Ed Res J 35, 401–425 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-022-00422-0, Open access:

Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely

Any

You could try this

https://software.labir.eu/#information Andy Kyle

Thanks, I will definitely have a look. The help and guidance is much appreciated.

Andy

Thanks, Mohammed Yaseen Alzahawi , I am of the same opinion, however, I am more interested in the underlying rationale.

Dear , thanks for your elaboration on the query. With my limited understanding and what the literature outlined, it depends on the VSA (Visual-spatial abilities) capability of the individuals. Individuals with high VSA are able to process spatially complex procedures while still retaining sufficient cognitive resources to benefit from using 3D visualisation while learning. With low VSA, individuals utilise more cognitive resources when performing a spatially complex task. This results in an increase in cognitive load as they learn. Therefore, in individuals with low VSA, it may be possible to compensate for the higher cognitive demands by improving instructional methods.

Good afternoon dear Randel Estacio

You should have first measured the relationship between those variables before determining the influence.

1.-You only measured the relationship between the variables: (cognitive load, knowledge gain, and self-efficacy)

2.-You did not measure the correlation strength between those variables

3.-You should have measured the strength of the correlation between the variables: (cognitive load, knowledge gain, and self-efficacy)

4.-Only based on the third point, only there, could you determine the influence of the graphic organizers on these variables.

Remember that a relationship is not enough to prove a consequence.

You can prepare own questionnaire based on your review of the literature!

COuld you read this ?

Hi Stefan,

This may not directly relate to your question but I found this interesting. I am not sure if you have seen this paper or not.

Leahy, W., & Sweller, J. (2019). Cognitive Load Theory, Resource Depletion and the Delayed Testing Effect. Educational psychology review, 31(2), 457-478. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09476-2

Regards,

James

If you're interested in attention-related effects, you'll likely be focusing on early components (e.g., P1, N1, P2). This is where it helps to dive into the ERP literature, specifically studies that have examined phenomenon or questions closely related to your own study. This can help you take a more "targeted" approach regarding which component(s) to examine and isolating regions where this component(s) tends to be most clearly observed.

Cognitive load measures using the dual-task paradigm require a learner to perform two tasks simultaneously. It is assumed that performance for the second task drops when the primary task, i.e., the learning task, becomes more loading.

Interesting.

Interesting topic.

I wish you good luck in your work, dear colleague.

maybe this could help you https://www.jstor.org/stable/23363899?seq=1

I personally believe, research in time perception domain is very important as time is something that is very fundamental to all of us, yet we don't understand what's actually goes inside our brain when we explicitly or implicitly perceive time. It has implications in mental disorders, temporal illusions etc. The need to do research more in this domain becomes important as there is no particular sense organ for temporal perception unlike of visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile and olfactory perception. Now, there is surge in research in this domain in India and many professors are interested to work and are currently working in this research field.

I hope in the next five years in India, this research field will flourish but we do need collaborations across the institute. Also i hope that there should be a well developed lab (with availability of cutting edge research equipment) that should especially focus on time perception related studies with all the possible approaches and paradigms.

Hi @Shufan Yu,

Mental load is an external factor, whereas, mental effor is an internal factor. For example, task difficulty or secondary task affect the mental load that it can be led to mental effort. For mental effort measurement can be used by EEG

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Thanks Yousif for your answer.

I presume you must have a sham group with which the performance of the experimental group actually undergoing physiological tests is compared. The cognitive load is easily controlled for if the sham condition is equal to the experimental condition in discomfort. (If the experimental group is having continuous brachial artery pressure measurements, then both groups should have an intra-arterial cannula and transducer, but no measurement taken from the control group)

I do not understand what do you mean by "Hepatology students"? Are these graduate students doing post-graduate training in Hepatology? Why Hepatology students in particular? what is your control group? Are these questions part of a questionnaire? What is the aim of your research? How did you develop these questions? What is the problem, and what are your research questions?

Hepatology is a straight forward subject and is much easier compared to cardiology, or neurology. So you need a control group to compare.

This is an interesting recent review.

Of course, what constitutes intrinsic or extraneous cognitive load depends on what needs to be learned. For example, if the goal of learning is to comprehend concepts incorporated in some text, using jargon may constitute an extraneous cognitive load.

Philip, I have just spent three years doing a full time PhD on learning which incorporated a close look at the learning theories already mentioned and some that have not yet been mentioned. At a summary level, all learning theories come from a particular stance and set of beliefs (Behaviourism, Cognitivism). This is both a strength and downfall. For example, many of the psychological theories look at individual learning only. The social aspects of learning are more focused upon through interaction with educators in these individual learning theories. Sociocultural learning theories, on the other hand, include the social and cultural aspects of learning (Social constructionism, Constructivist including Vygotsky). These learning theories recognise that individual learners are part of social and cultural systems. Brofenbrenner's Ecological systems theory is the most complete learning theory in this regard.

However, with the advent of EdTech and its integration into learning processes, there has been a stronger recognition that individual learners are learning within a context. This context may be a community of practice/community of learning (Lave and Wenger, Garrison) such as found in online learning. Siemens and Downes have written extensively in online learning utilising networks and collaboration rather than focusing on individual learning processes. Their theory of connectivism is well worth reading as it moves away from educator to learner interaction to everybody in the community of learning interacting with each other, learning artifacts that are curated, and recognises that knowing how to learn is more important than what we learn. Therefore, it aligns with lifelong and lifewide learning.

After looking at the learning theories closely, I am left with the feeling that we need to move beyond their rigidities. In order to do this, we need to have a clear understanding of learning, how it occurs, what we as educators can do to promote learning, and ultimately we need to be research-informed in developing learning principles that work for our context and the learners with whom we work.

Thanks for the interesting question.

The significance of motivation

I suggest you check out this article reflecting on David Geary's hypothesized biologically primary and secondary forms of knowledge. His thesis is derived in light of CLT and has implications for the classroom.

Link: http://www.3evoie.org/telechargementpublic/australie/sweller2008a.pdf

There are few considerations to be taken care of. If the writing is independent, such like the participant can write as he or she thinks, the working memory involvement is relatively low and long term memory effect is more active. In stimulus guided writing - following some visual cue and writing will cause more involvement of working memory.

There could be some approaches as follows:

1. Incorporate disturbance in the stimulus: undesired visual elements in and around the focus point.

2. Verbal arithmetic could be another way of disturbance, as it is totally working memory performance.

3. Visual pattern matching task.

4. n back tasks could be good one: you can increase the level of difficulty: 1 back, 2 back, 3 back(mostly participants will fail to do).

you can consider the performance error as a parameter and can correlate it with the change in cognitive load during multiple working memory performance.

But, it is still confusing if the brain perform working memory tasks through parallel processing or not. Your study could reveal this too.

Have you consulted the manual? I believe this is a link to the manual. http://thoughttechnology.com/pdf/manuals/SA7913%20V6.0%20BioGraph%20Infiniti%20Getting%20Started.pdf

People have been pondering this since Herbert Simon first wrote about cognitive capacity. We simply don’t have the ability to go through thorough and extensive decision making processes every time we are about to make a purchase, engage in a routine activity, etc. and so we tend to separate out those things that need careful attention from those things that do not. We give priority – rightly I think – to major purchases like cars. But the question of whether we behave differently when dealing with those things that we’ve not mentally vetted versus those that we have is not one that I’ve seen addressed. There is an element of whether the un-vetted purchase or activity presents us with something unexpected - something that may happen, but differently, with a vetted activity. It’s an excellent research question.

Hi Katharina,

I am still not sure whether the 9-digit memorization task is the dependent variable or the manipulation.

In any case, assuming the former to be true, whatever your cog. capacity manipulation is, what you could do is test how strongly the score on your task relates to other measures of cognitive capacity (maybe in a separate sample?). For example, you could have participants complete: a complex span task, an n-back task (or any other measure which relates to different aspects of cognitive control), or even Raven's matrices to measure abstract reasoning.

On the other hand, if the 9-digit task is your manipulation, you can just have your pp complete the suggested tasks.

Small tip: maybe you will also want to measure the baseline cognitive capacity of your groups to control for pre-existing differences.

Hope it helps,

Cheers,

Tiziano

You will find the answer to your question in the two manuscripts in Attachment. It is necessary to take into account age-related changes in the EEG. There are many other conditions that need to be taken into account, in addition to the well-known. Season, diurnal rhythms, horizontal or other position of the subject, the degree of relaxation of the subject, the accuracy of fixing the electrodes, the length of the hair of the subject, the condition of the skin ...

Hello Ivan,

Any scale development begins with the question, what is the intended use or purpose of scores from this measure? Research (e.g. on perceived cognitive load)? Making decisions about individuals? Something else?

Once you identify the intended purpose of the measure, you can then either adapt an existing measure with a claimed or verified factor structure, or you can determine what major factor(s)/facet(s) you'd like your measure to tap, consult the literature and domain experts, and start generating potential items for review and then field trial. Field trial means collecting response data from persons representative of the target population (for the measure).

Various analytic methods may be applied at that stage, to help make the case for (a) the claimed dimensionality of the measure; and (b) the utility of the scores from the measure for the intended purpose(s).

I'm sorry if this seems a little open-ended, but your question is quite open-ended as posted. Here's one good resource on scale development; others exist as well:

DeVellis, R. F. (2012). Scale development: Theory and applications (3rd ed. Vol. 26). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Good luck with your work!

Dear Indika,

if you have access to an eye tracker, phasic pupil dilation would be an adequate indicator. You might have a look into this paper, in which they also applied a working memory task and assessed pupil dilation:

Tsukahara, J. S., Harrison, T. L., & Engle, R. W. (2016). The relationship between baseline pupil size and intelligence. Cognitive Psychology, 91, 109-123. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2016.10.001

Pupil dilation strongly correlated with actual cognitive load.

Best,

Hi Naveen,

This article may help as a similar technique to analysis EEG signal. However, its about driver fatigue and not workload.

" Noise Robustness Analysis of Performance for EEG-Based Driver Fatigue Detection Using Different Entropy Feature Set "

Regards

Thank you so much for your feedback, Sigi!

I checked your Frontiers paper and your data (Sporer & Walther, 2004) look very interesting. From the description, I infer RTs were measured during a face to face interview? For the current meta-analyses, following the Verschuere et al., 2015 Wiley chapter and Suchotzki et al 2017 Psych Bull, we only included computerized RT paradigms with at least 20 lie and 20 truth trials, arguing this is needed to reliably pick up RT costs of lying.

I fully agree that rehearsal is an interesting moderator. Our reliance on computerized paradigms complicates coding in terms of rehearsal. Using the criteria above, by definition all studies include some form of rehearsal (all participants have several lie trials and several truth trials). Then again, I think few, perhaps none, will have had rehearsal time before the lie test. Moreover, while there are clear expectations for the effect of rehearsal on the cognitive costs of lying (i.e., rehearsal may diminish the lie - truth RT difference), it is less clear how rehearsal would change the effect of load on lying?

I am glad to say that we have half published and half unpublished studies; and that we have only one third (k=7) 'in-house' studies (me as co-author) and 14 studies from other labs. Moreover, we do not test an 'in-house' theory. So publication bias and developer bias are less likely to be at play.

Finally, lying was manipulated within subjects for all studies (=inclusion criterion), but you are right that for load we have both within and between subject manipulations. On p9 we describe how we dealt with that - would you say its insufficient? Could you please send us a copy of your chapter Sporer, S. L., & Cohn, L. D. (2011). Meta-analysis. In B. D. Rosenfeld, & S. D. Penrod (Eds.), Research methods in forensic psychology(pp. 43–62). New York: Wiley.?

Thank you!

Bruno

ps Wiley chapter I refer to is Verschuere, B., Suchotzki, K., & Debey, E. (2015). Detecting deception through reaction times. In P. A. Granhag, A. Vrij, & B. Verschuere (Eds.), Deception detection: Current challenges and new approaches. Chichester, UK: Wiley, Ltd.

Thank you all for your answers. It seems that the main conclusion is that you can get a baseline for anxiety/stress but not for the cognitive load imposed by the task (it seems pretty obvious now, when you've pointed it out).

I've used pupilometry as a physiological metric and NASA TLX as self-assessment.

Sir,

Your example is absolutely correct. If relevant information is presented in the task to user, Extraneous cognitive load will reduce. Further, Extraneous CL will be reduced if you use multi-modality channels for the same information(Mousavi, S. Y., Low, R., & Sweller,1995).

But still types of cognitive load due to task cannot be measured separately. There are always some amount of intrinsic , extraneous and germane CL will be present in the task. However, we may identify the maximum weight among the type of CL.

Before measuring any type of CL or total CL., one should always focus on "How to design stimuli and What task should given to the user". So that difference in CL in users due to task can be measured precisely and clearly.

For multimedia instructional design CLT is ideal. Go for it. All the best Dr Nachi Muthu for your experiments.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Thank you very much for this etymologic reminder! I, therefore, think I will opt for "charge cognitive nécessaire". Have a nice day!

Surekha   Stress is a rather ambiguous and much misused term in this context. If you search on "Cognitive impact of anxiety" you will find there is much research available.

In particular the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) should meet your requirements.

Hi Nourhan,

The Paas scale is by far the most used measure in the last 20 years or so. The google books link below has an example of what it looks like on p. 16. This scale is usually administered after every test question you'd like to measure, or after every question or example during the learning phase of your experiment.

A few years ago, a different scale was developed by Leppink that actually measures all types of cognitive load separately and is administered at the end of the learning phase. It was tested on PhD students, so bear that in mind. I saw him speak earlier in the summer and the conversation was being had around germane load - can you actually measure germane load? The consensus was that when measuring germane load using this instrument, that it might be more appropriate to say we're measuring a Subjective Judgement of Learning, that is, how the learner thinks they've improved based on their learning experience. 

Thanks for your help and your valuable references

Hi Jason,

Have you considered a mental arithmetic task? The difficulty of serial subtractions can be varied by adjusting the length of numbers in the subtrahend and/or minuend. Difficulty might also be manipulated by adjusting the the time allowed to provide an answer, but this could introduce unwanted emotional activation.

Best,

Mal

Here you are two papera about it.

Salazar, E., Domínguez, E., Iborra, O., de Córdoba, M. J., & Milán, E. G. (2015). Capítulo 2. Termografía aplicada a la Psicología: Presentación. NEUROTERMOGRAFÍA Y TERMOGRAFÍA PSICOSOMÁTICA, 35.

Ramos Sandoval, O. L., & Amaya Hurtado, D. (2015). Sistema de control de trayectoria en manipulador de cinco grados de libertad utilizando sensor Emotiv.

If you are looking for tasks without movement, I can suggest you the SMI 500 RED. We have been working here with this devices, and the reliability is much better than glasses.

"Cognitive demand" and "cognitive load" are different concepts in cognitive psychology.  The "cognitive demand" of a task is how intellectually challenging it is.  You might make a problem more cognitively demanding by making it less structured (e.g., you have to clarify the nature of the problem to solve), providing excess information that could distract us, or asking for an explanation about why an answer is true, rather than simply expecting the right answer with an algorithm.

While we're solving a problem, we need to keep in mind the facts of the problem, our goal, and possible strategies & procedures.  We keep this information in mind with "working memory" and we call the amount we have in our working memory our "cognitive load."  Unfortunately, we have a limited amount of working memory so we can only hold so much in mind while we solve a problem.  For example, you probably can't figure out what 1.234 * 56.789 is in your head.  It's not because it's cognitively demanding.  Afterall, you know exactly what steps to do to get the answer.  Instead it's too great a cognitive load: keep those two numbers in mind, while doing the multiplication algorithm, producing each number on a row that you'll eventually add, etc.

You might reduce your cognitive load while solving a cognitively demanding problem by, for example, creating external representations (e.g., writing down key information).  And reducing the cognitive load is often an excellent decision in trying to solve a cognitively demanding problem.  Hope this helps Annie!

Kevin

Be attentive to the relationship of visual and other  perceptions, namely auditory perception. In fact, because in the real life the stimuli been almost always multi sensorial, they interfere on to another, and that fact  have a determinant influence on the discrimination and representation of the stimuli, specially on complex situations.

As a former history teacher, I would agree more with the your K12 practitioners. While I would never proclaim that history content was irrelevant, I would argue that it should be critiqued rather than consumed.  From a critical and cultural perspective, knowledge is constructed and heavily aligned with social power. As a result, it lends itself to be contested. The slant and control of what is considered as valid "historical content" makes its consumption rather toxic (if not dangerous) for our increasingly more diverse student body. 

While I couldn't answer your questions, I think they are quite relevant! I look forward to reading the different responses.

Please see the work of Charoula Angeli and Nicos Valanides in the University of Cyprus on TPCK.

Cognitive load is often a parameter built into experiments as an independent variable up to the definition of the experimenter. In my experience, cognitive load is quite difficult to infer from any raw physiological measure.

It might seem too ponderously philosophical to say so, but the notion of cognition or mind or brain as a container, i.e., for a load to be carried, always leads to challenging explanations, especially as you look for more concrete empirical anchors such as eye tracking data.

Best wishes,

Damian

Dear Ahmet, We recently published a paper showing robust EDA (we called it skin conductance response [SCR]) differences between judging an ambiguous picture, sentence or sound as 'harmless' or 'threatening'. These SCR measures were collected during an fMRI experiment, so we also investigated the neural correlates of autonomic arousal; and related phasic SCR responses to personality traits. As is alluded to in one of the other answers, there is the complication of 'non-responders' - some of our subjects showed an almost completely flat trace throughout the experiment (though 'normal' BOLD responses). Hence you need a-priori exclusion criteria for these subjects. One answer to your question is therefore that EDA is a robust, reliable, not-subjective psychophysiological biomarker of psychological stress within subjects, but not always between. In a separate study we found that heart rate variability (HRV) was a better marker of cognitive load (i.e. effort) than SCR. Finally, don't forget that an SCR is relatively easy to fake (clench your buttocks, screw up your toes, dig your nails into your hand, imagine your children being tortured etc), so is not really suited to high stakes situations like the polygraph.

Hi,

>You mean that cognitive load should be constant across the different tests/conditions in your experiment?

Yes, we didn't impose any cognitive load (no double-task, etc.), rather some mild psychological stress.

Have a look at the Methods section where everything is explained in detail.

Regards,

Marco

Generally speaking, if the tasks imply the subject's response, load can be measured by assessing the number of correct responses (with respect to the number of responses expected) and the reaction times (time interval between a task request and the subject's response). It is known that reaction time is generally a more sensitive measure with respect to correct responses, as it begins to show modulatory effects due to increasing cognitive load (usually, a delay in response), well before a decrease in correct responses rate happens. I.e. the subject gradually deploys larger and larger effort, still managing to sustain optimal performance in terms of correct responses, up to a point in which a breakdown of performance is observed through a decrease of correct responses rate. I suggest literature by Susanne Jaeggi about cognitive and working memory load.

Hello! Changes in skin conductance level are often estimated based on area under the curve or PP interval. This chapter might be useful: http://www.imd.inder.cu/adjuntos/article/487/Methods%20in%20Mind.pdf#page=116.

This is an interesting and highly current topic for educational research Sarunya, but I feel the advice to narrow the scope of your inquiry is quite valid. Reading your original query, the thing that struck me most was the need to operationally define the phrase "knowledge absorptive capacity" in clear, concrete terms. Does this phrase correspond in some way to working memory capacity? Or is it more aligned with the ability to abstract (and later recall) information from long-term memory? It will be difficult to progress your interest until such aspects of the inquiry are clarified. Certainly all the best with it...Tony Yeigh/SCU

Butler uses a 11 minute film of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their aftermath. It produces a reliable emotional load to the point of resulting in significantly higher blood pressure especially among European Americans, but also among Asian Americans in general too, especially if they talk about the film afterwards (talking tends to reduce the blood pressure of Americans conversely). Professor Butler is very cooperative so I think it likely that she would be so kind as to share the stimulus.

Please see any of these papers

Butler, E. A. (2012). Emotion Regulation in Cultural Context: Implications for Wellness and Illness. In S. Barnow & N. Balkir (Eds.), Cultural Variations in Psychopathology: From Research to Practice. Hogrefe & Huber Pub. Retrieved from http://www.hogrefe.com/program/media/flyingbooks/600434/files/assets/basic-html/page17.html

Butler, E. A., Lee, T. L., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Emotion regulation and culture: Are the social consequences of emotion suppression culture-specific? Emotion, 7(1), 30.

Butler, E. A., Lee, T. L., & Gross, J. J. (2009). Does Expressing Your Emotions Raise or Lower Your Blood Pressure?: The Answer Depends on Cultural Context. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(3), 510–517. doi:10.1177/0022022109332845