雅思阅读

📖 Reading Passage

The concept of 'cognitive load' refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. In educational psychology, cognitive load theory suggests that learning is most effective when instructional materials are designed to minimize extraneous cognitive load, thereby freeing resources for the intrinsic load necessary to process complex information. However, recent studies have challenged the assumption that reducing cognitive load always enhances learning. For instance, research by Kalyuga et al. (2003) found that for learners with high prior knowledge, instructional guidance designed to reduce cognitive load can actually impede learning by creating a 'redundancy effect', where unnecessary information interferes with schema construction. This suggests that the optimal level of cognitive load is not universally low but depends on the learner's expertise. Such findings underscore the need for adaptive instructional designs that tailor the complexity of materials to individual learner characteristics, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach to cognitive load reduction.