Plass, J. L., & Kalyuga, S. (2019). Four ways of considering emotion in cognitive load theory
Cognitive load theory is a psychological model which describes two elements of human memory: long-term and working memory. It is a good background for describing emotions, and this article describes the four ways how emotions may be shown using this model. Working memory is short-term, limited in capacity, and designed to interpret newly obtained information. In contrast, long-term memory is used for storing the obtained knowledge in an organized form, which may increase the working memory capacity and its ability to process various information. Cognitive load is the load on the working memory: how fast it processes information and how long it can do this. Emotions may influence working memory in several ways, and, as mentioned, four of them are explored in this article.
Shortly, those four ways see emotions as an external cognitive load, a factor impacting memory, an intrinsic cognitive load, or the connections between emotions and motivation. The external cognitive load model sees emotions as the source of the load, mostly negative. For example, anxiety or stress may cause a bundle of thoughts that load the memory, hindering the ability to learn and understand others. A second way considers emotions as triggers that influence working memory in either positive or negative ways: for example, the working memory works much more efficiently when learning something interesting. Long-term memory is influenced by emotional states, too: this influence is slow and appears sometime after the emotional effect.
A third perspective, the intrinsic cognitive load, shows the control of emotions by the working memory, creating the internal load. The article shows a prominent example from medicine, as nurses and doctors should be able to control their emotions when communicating with their patients. The fourth model considers emotions as the motivating stimuli, either positive or negative, and classifies them according to their motivational strength and direction. All four approaches are not mutually exclusive and may be used together depending on the situation. The main field where the cognitive load theory is used is education and communication, and those models of emotions enable the construction of the most efficient learning environments.
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., Kirschner, F., & Zambrano R., J. (2018). From cognitive load theory to collaborative cognitive load theory.
A cognitive load theory, as mentioned, is mostly applicable in the field of education; this article shows how it may be applied to collaborative learning. For that, the theory is expanded by adding the description of transactive activities, their cognitive costs, and the learning context. Transactive activities are models describing communication and coordination between members of study groups. Each team member has a separate model which shows their expertise level and the cognitive load created by each communication act, such as showing other team members some task element and explaining it. Those models enable seeing how to establish the most efficient communication between learners.
The learning context is the set of interactions between the task, the learners, and the team. The task is described as a bunch of experiences that should be learned in a given time. Good guidance and support are required to successfully complete and learn the task. The learner is classified based on their domain-specific expertise, their level of knowledge and skills, and their collaboration skills. The team characteristics are its size, assigned roles, such as chairman or recorder, composition, and prior experience. Together, the context and the transactive activities model create a framework that facilitates collaborative learning and team collaboration in general.
Puddifoot, K., & Bortolotti, L. (2018). Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs
This article describes three ways of false memory belief formation, which, according to the author, is often the result of inherent cognitive processes. Despite that, the tendency to have false memories is much increased during cognitive diseases. Next in the article and in conclusion, the concept of epistemic innocence is introduced, and the costs and benefits of false memories and beliefs are discussed. Epistemic innocense means that there are intrinsic mechanisms, not controlled by the consciousness, that may lead to the false memory creation.
The Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) illusion is one of the mechanisms of false memory formation, which was firstly described in the 1950s and revised in the 1990s. The effect is that when people see the list with several words, they may predictably say that there was a word in the list that, in reality, was absent. Imagination inflation is another effect that often leads to false memory formation. Simply, it is the case when a person imagines an event that never occurred, and then this false memory was strengthened by false beliefs connected with them. The third mechanism of false memory formation is the post-event information effect, when a person obtains information about the event after the actual event happened. Simple misinformation is one of the possible ways how false memories of this type are formed. While those three mechanisms create false memories, they may also have epistemic benefits, such as increasing one’s confidence or promoting the usage of the associative memory. Understanding those mechanisms helps to distinguish false memories and beliefs from true ones and see how and when they were formed.
Suad, M. A. S. A.-L. (2019). Understanding the psychology of youths: Generation gap
The generation gap results from different conditions in which various generations grow. This study researched the generation gap between various generations in Oman: namely, between those who were born in the 1970s and before, the 1980s and 1990s, and the 2000s. The researcher tested four hypotheses: that there is a generation gap between young students and their parents, that statistical difference exists between male and female students, humanitarian and science students, and between high- and low-level achievers. For data gathering, a research questionnaire was designed with seven characteristics to explore: personality characteristics, technological information, lifestyle, social and cultural values, communication ways, information level, and work values. A questionnaire contained 50 items, and the respondent may choose the level of agreement with each of them from 1 (totally disagree) to 6 (totally agree). The study objective is to show the differences between various generations, in this case, in Oman, especially those born before and after the 1980s. Another objective is to propose ways to reach a mutual understanding between generations based on the questionnaire’s answers.
Results showed that the generation gap is large in personality characteristics, technological information, lifestyle, and work values. In social and cultural values, the gap is medium, and in communication way and information levels, it is low. The gap is larger between male students and their parents than between female students and parents. High study achievers experience a lesser gap than medium- or low achievers, and humanitarian students have a lesser gap, too, than science ones. In general, those values indicate that youth’s personality traits, active use of technologies, and changes in the lifestyle and workstyle are the main sources of the generation gap. To reach a mutual understanding, learning about the context of each generation is recommended. For example, people born in the 1990s and further should learn about the live conditions of people born in the 1970s and vice versa. It would help to establish the point of understanding, reduce possible conflicts, and improve the quality of communication between people of various ages.
Sweller, J. (2019). Cognitive load theory and educational technology
As mentioned in other articles, cognitive load theory is a good tool to use in education technology, and this article explores various aspects of how this theory may be applied to learning. It starts by dividing the learning information into two categories, biologically primary and secondary, similarly to the article of Kirschner et al. (2018). Another similar classification contains generic-cognitive and domain-specific knowledge and skills: the first is the basic skills, such as the ability to plan and develop a problem-solving strategy. In contrast, domain-specific skills require additional qualifications in a certain field, for example, mathematics, physics, engineering, or medicine. They are not general, unlike the former category, and must be taught separately, for example, to obtain the electric engineer or surgeon profession. After exploring the information and knowledge types, the work with information is described, and the conclusion shows seven cognitive load effects, important for education.
The process of acquiring, processing, and storing information is described according to the cognitive load theory. It is acquired from the external environment by working memories, slowly processed, and then stored in the long-term memory in the organized form. Seven cognitive load effects are then elucidated, which are the most relevant for the education technology and are to be used in it. Those seven are worked examples, split-attention, modality, transient information, redundancy, expertise reversal, and working memory depletion effects. Based on them, teaching materials may be created to maximize positive effects, such as worked examples, and minimize negative ones, such as the split-attention effect.
References
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., Kirschner, F., & Zambrano R., J. (2018). From cognitive load theory to collaborative cognitive load theory. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 13(2), 213–233. Web.
Plass, J. L., & Kalyuga, S. (2019). Four ways of considering emotion in cognitive load theory. Educational Psychology Review, 31(2), 339–359. Web.
Puddifoot, K., & Bortolotti, L. (2018). Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs. Philosophical Studies, 176(3), 755–780. Web.
Suad, M. A. S. A.-L. (2019). Understanding the psychology of youths: Generation gap. International Journal of Psychology and Counselling, 11(6), 46–58. Web.
Sweller, J. (2019). Cognitive load theory and educational technology. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(1). Web.