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Effects of concurrent monitoring on cognitive load and performance as a function of task complexity
Author(s) -
Van Gog Tamara,
Kester Liesbeth,
Paas Fred
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1726
Subject(s) - task (project management) , cognitive load , perspective (graphical) , cognition , function (biology) , psychology , cognitive psychology , elementary cognitive task , effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance , task analysis , computer science , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , engineering , systems engineering , evolutionary biology , biology
Summary For self‐regulated learning to be effective, students or trainees need to be able to accurately monitor their performance while they are working on a task, use the outcomes as input for self‐assessment of that performance after completing the task and select an appropriate new learning task in response to that assessment. From a cognitive load perspective, monitoring can be seen as a secondary task that may become hard to maintain and hamper performance on the primary task under high load conditions. The experiment presented here investigated the effects of concurrent performance monitoring on cognitive load and performance as a function of task complexity. Results showed that monitoring significantly decreased performance and increased cognitive load on complex, but not on simple tasks. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical consequences and instructional design for self‐regulated learning. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.