Reasoning More Efficiently with Primary Knowledge Despite Extraneous Cognitive Load.

Geary's evolutionary approach in educational psychology differentiates between primary (low cognitive costs and motivational advantage) and secondary knowledge (high cognitive costs and no motivational benefit). Although these features have been well demonstrated in previous work, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. To investigate it, in a reasoning task, the present study varies (i) the content of the problems (primary knowledge vs.

Primary vs. secondary knowledge contents in reasoning: Motivated and efficient vs. overburdened.

Primary knowledge is the knowledge for which our cognitive architecture has evolved so that we acquire it quickly and effortlessly. We are intrinsically motivated to process it. Secondary knowledge is the knowledge for which our cognitive architecture has not had enough time to evolve: it requires time, cognitive resources and is hardly motivating.

Reducing cognitive load during video lectures in physiology with eye movement modeling and pauses: a randomized controlled study.

Lectures constitute a basic component of physiology instruction in scientific and healthcare curricula. Technological progress has allowed a switch from face to face to video lectures, yet there is no evidence of video efficacy in physiology. Because videos increase the cognitive load during a learning task, identifying tools that decrease students' cognitive load during video lectures is critical.

The advantages of listening to academic content in a second language may be outweighed by disadvantages: A cognitive load theory approach.

Background: It is frequently implicitly assumed that advantages in language acquisition when learning content through a second language exceed the disadvantages of reduced content acquisition.

Aims: Based on cognitive load theory, that assumption was tested experimentally. The theory is concerned with techniques for reducing extraneous working memory load in order to facilitate learning.

Configured-groups hypothesis: fast comparison of exact large quantities without counting.

Our innate number sense cannot distinguish between two large exact numbers of objects (e.g., 45 dots vs 46).

Prior knowledge in learning from a non-linear electronic document: Disorientation and coherence of the reading sequences.

A study was carried out to investigate the effects of prior knowledge on learning with a non-linear electronic document including an interactive conceptual map. Cognitive Load Theory was used as theoretical framework to investigate effects on cognitive load and disorientation in learning from non-linear documents. Forty-four future high school biology teachers were required to learn the multiplication cycle of a virus from either a hierarchical structure (organisational links) or a network structure (relational links).