Desirable Difficulty or Cognitive Overload?

Combining text and visuals:
Desirable Difficulty or Cognitive Overload?
Carol Lethaby clethaby@clethaby.com
Website: http://clethaby.com
Twitter: @clethaby
TESOL 2019 Atlanta

Before we start:
• Why do we combine text and visuals when teaching
reading and listening?
• How can we make sure that reading and listening
tasks are not too hard for learners?
• How can we make sure that reading and listening
tasks have sufficient challenge for language learners?
Carol Lethaby, 2019 clethaby@clethaby.com

Why do we combine text and visuals?
• 1 To make written text more accessible to learners.
• 2 To make spoken text more accessible to learners.
From: English ID 1 by Lethaby and Gontow (Richmond Publishing)

• We assume this is going to help learners to understand

From: English ID 1 by Lethaby and Gontow (Richmond Publishing)

But does it always help?

•Learning from Text with Diagrams:
Promoting Mental Model Development
and Inference Generation
•Butcher, Kirsten R.
•Journal of Educational Psychology, v98 n1
p182-197 Feb 2006

Butcher, Kirsten R.
Journal of Educational Psychology, v98 n1 p182-
197 Feb 2006

“Visual representations appear to be
most effective when they are designed to
support the cognitive processes
necessary for deep comprehension.”
Butcher, 2006

•If we present learners with too much
information – text and complex visuals that
don’t support comprehension of the text
this will be too hard for learners.
(extraneous load)
•Text and visuals need to support each other.

•This is related to the cognitive load theory of
instructional design which Wiliam (2017) insists
is “the single most important thing for teachers
to know”.

How we learn
•Working memory and long-term memory
Erich parker [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Working memory
• Working memory is the memory system where small amounts of
information are stored for a very short duration (Peterson & Peterson
1959) 1

Working memory is limited
• There is a limit to how much new information the human brain can
process at one time

The limits of working memory
•Vocabulary items?
How many new ones at
a time?
•Very few, but if the
learner already knows
them or has them
organized in a group /
they are cognates -
more

Long-term memory
• Clark, Kirschner and Sweller call long-term memory ‘that big mental
warehouse of things (be they words, people, grand philosophical
ideas, or skateboard tricks) we know’ (2012, p. 8).

Long-term memory has no known limits
The brain can process large amounts of material
that is stored in the long term memory

Knowledge Schemas
•1 System to organize and store knowledge
•2 Reduce working memory load (a ‘schema’
is just one element in working memory )

Knowledge Schemas
•The limitations of working memory can be
overcome by schema construction and
automation. (page 3)

Working and long-term memory
• Try to remember the following combination of letters:
• y-m-r-e-o-m.
• Now try to remember the following combination of letters:
• m-e-m-o-r-y.
• What do you notice?

So …
•It’s essential that learners have good knowledge
schemas (that is, they make good connections
between what they know already and new
information so that it is integrated into their
schema)

Knowledge Schema in Language Learning
•How to greet someone
•How to talk about the past

Summary
• Working memory – limited – can hold few items
• Long-term memory – no limits – organized by knowledge
schemas

Cognitive Load
The theory refers to the
amount of mental effort
required to complete a task. If
the cognitive load is too high
the learner will not be
successful in learning.

www.cese.nsw.gov.au

Cognitive load
1 intrinsic load
2 extraneous load
3 germane load

1 intrinsic load
•how difficult a task is inherently based on what
the learner knows already (background
knowledge / knowledge schemas)

Previous knowledge
•“the single most widely demonstrated
difference [in learning outcomes] is prior
knowledge.”
•(Clark, 2014: 335).

•What has high ‘intrinsic load’ for a beginner will
probably have low ‘intrinsic load’ for an
advanced learner.

2 extraneous load
•the extra visual and/or aural information
required to process the new information in
working memory – we need to minimise this

3 germane load
•relevant cognitive processing needed to
integrate the new information into long-term
memory – how learners connect old and new
information – process it in working memory
•we need to optimise this through the pre/ tasks /
tasks we set.

Minimising extraneous load
•extraneous load - the extra visual and/or aural
information required to process the new
information in working memory

Working memory
•Overload leads to information loss – either
incoming information will not be processed, or
an item “in process” will be dropped for a new
one. https://sites.google.com/view/efratfurst/learning-in-the-brain

The ‘redundancy effect’
•Additional information that is not directly
relevant to learning, or repeated information in
multiple forms is not helpful to learners
(overloads working memory)

Example of redundancy

The ‘split attention effect’
•When learners have to process two or more
sources of information at the same time
•“Learners should not be required to search for
needed information.” Sweller, 2017

Split attention effect
• As you read, look up the words that you don’t know in
a dictionary.
• As you read, match the words in bold to the
definitions on your handout.

So ….
•Should we only use either visual OR auditory
information?
•NO! Note the modality effect ….

The ‘modality effect’
•But: Using more than one source of information
can decrease extraneous load: auditory and
visual
•The two must support each other

Desirable difficulty
•Bjork (1994) coined the term ‘desirable difficulty’ to
describe a task that requires considerable cognitive
load, but that is still accomplishable, asserting that
such tasks improve long-term performance.
• Minimise extraneous load (cut down stuff that distracts
/ is not relevant / is redundant)
• Optimise germane load (create tasks and pre-tasks that
help learners to make connections between what they
already know and new information – visuals and text
that support each other)

Desirable difficulty
•Learners think that reading vocabulary lists
through helps them to learn them, but this is not
challenging enough
•Practice testing is more effective

• Text and visuals must support each other for learning to take
place
• The working memory is limited
• Long-term memory is much larger and organized in schemas
• Cognitive load: mental effort required to complete a task, if
the load is too much, the learner won’t learn
• When combining text and visuals – we want to cut out any
extraneous load and optimize germane load by creating tasks
that encourage schema organization and building – desirable
difficulty

• From: Just Right Pre-
Intermediate First Edition
by Harmer, Acevedo and
Lethaby (Cengage)

Questions:
•1 How do the visuals support the text?
•2 How can we create ‘desirable difficulty’ by
optimizing ‘germane load’?

Example of optimizing germane load:
• Encouraging learners to think about what they know
already to help them to incorporate new information.
• Looking at the pictures and identifying what is to
come in the text in English.
• Play the text as audio and have the learners identify
the items on the visual as they hear them.

How is the next version different?

• From: Just Right Pre-Intermediate Second Edition by
Harmer, Acevedo and Lethaby (Cengage)

Example of extraneous load:

Look at this reading text:
• What visuals could you show with
this that will support understanding?
• What pre-task could help learners?
From: English ID 1 by Lethaby and
Gontow (Richmond Publishing)

Summary
• Learning is about connecting new knowledge to what we know
already through construction and automation of knowledge
schemas
• The theory of cognitive load says that there are three types of
effort on the brain: intrinsic, extraneous and germane.
• We need to minimize extraneous load and optimize germane
load when teaching new things through text.
• Visuals need to support comprehension of the text – the
redundancy effect, the split attention effect, the modality effect
• Tasks need to be designed carefully so that they are effective and
at the right level: ‘desirable difficulty’

Desirable Difficulty or Cognitive Overload?
Carol Lethaby clethaby@clethaby.com
Website: clethaby.com
Twitter: @clethaby

Desirable Difficulty or Cognitive Overload?

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