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, developed by John Sweller in the 1980s, suggests that learning is most effective when instructional materials are designed to minimize extraneous cognitive load, allowing learners to focus on intrinsic load and germane load. Intrinsic load is the inherent difficulty of the material itself, which cannot be altered, whereas extraneous load is generated by the way information is presented. Germane load is the mental effort devoted to processing and understanding the material, which contributes to learning. Recent studies have shown that multimedia presentations can inadvertently increase extraneous load if they include irrelevant visuals or redundant text, thereby hindering comprehension. Therefore, instructional designers must carefully select and integrate visual and verbal information to optimize learning outcomes.