- Insights from Dr Sue Wilkinson
What is Cognitive Load and Why Does it Matter?
Cognitive Load
Have you ever felt mentally exhausted after a day of learning something new or starting a new job? That feeling is often a sign of cognitive load at work – the total mental effort that is required to process, store, and retrieve information. This mental work happens in our working memory, which has a limited capacity. When working memory gets overloaded, it hampers our ability to learn and perform.
Cognitive load is made up of three distinct types: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane:
Intrinsic load is the inherent difficulty of the material itself. It increases with the number of elements you must hold and link together simultaneously. Think of it as the core complexity of a task.
Extraneous load arises from poorly designed instructions or distracting environments that force our brains to waste effort on nonessential details. This load is all about how information is presented.
Germane load is the valuable mental effort dedicated to deeper understanding. This is the “good” load, as it helps us build mental models (schemas) and transfer knowledge into our long-term memory.
Why Learning Suffers When the Cognitive Load is Too High or Too Low
Learning suffers when the cognitive load is either too high (working memory gets overloaded and hinders the transfer of information into long-term memory) or too low (as this translates to lack of sufficient challenge).
Ideally, we want to keep total cognitive load within our capacity so that we can effectively process information and move knowledge into our long-term memory. This is a critical consideration for everyone in the workplace. While cognitive load is relevant to all of us, neurodiverse individuals are particularly affected by the impacts of cognitive overload. Differences in working memory and executive function can make it harder to juggle multiple pieces of information, switch tasks, or filter distractions—all of which intensify the total cognitive load.
Increased Intrinsic Load
For neurodivergent individuals, reduced working memory capacity can make it disproportionately taxing to hold and manipulate multiple pieces of information at once, amplifying the intrinsic load of a task.
Heightened Extraneous Load
Often for neurodivergent learners, their brains may be hyper-responsive to sensory inputs, causing cluttered environments or ambiguous instructions to hijack their attention more readily. This leaves less mental capacity for the task at hand.
Reduced Germane Load
Germane load, which relies on metacognitive processes like planning and self-monitoring, is also reduced for neurodivergent learners. It will therefore be more of a challenge for these individuals to consciously dedicate mental effort to link new information with existing information and automate skills (which is how we achieve deeper learning).
Cognitive Load and Adjustments
Without consistent adjustments across format, environment, delivery, and instruction, every new situation or context can introduce unexpected cognitive hurdles for the neurodivergent individual. This uneven landscape forces them to continuously re-adapt, causing spikes in total mental effort which undermines both learning and performance. By actively understanding and managing cognitive load, we can create more inclusive and effective learning and working environments for everyone, allowing every individual to reach their full potential.
Strategies to reduce cognitive load in the workplace
- Break down complex content into smaller, sequential chunks
- Provide pre-training on key components to lower initial complexity and increase prior knowledge
- Sequence tasks from simple to complex, building schemas gradually
- Remove irrelevant text, images, or sounds from documents and environments to declutter and reduce distractions
- Use signalling (highlighting or cues) to draw attention to key elements
- Integrate related text and visuals to avoid attention being split across pages/sources
- Incorporate worked examples to illustrate problem-solving steps
- Prompt self-explanation, asking learners to articulate reasoning