Children often find it difficult to solve problems in the classroom, which can lead to silly errors being made. But are these mistakes made because of carelessness? Or is there another reason to explain why this occurs?
A theory of learning known as “cognitive load theory” can help shed light on why children make mistakes.
What Is Cognitive Load Theory?
Imagine that I asked you to remember the random sequence of letters, “XJGTYR”. How long do you think you could remember it for?
What about if I asked you to remember, “HYSIDHWGDXBU”. Clearly, this second task would be harder.
It has been known for some years that the number of items that we can remember like this over a short period of time is between about five and nine. So the first sequence might be possible but the second would be difficult unless you employed some sort of memory technique.
However, imagine that I now asked you to remember the sequence of letters, “INDEPENDENCE”.
There are 12 letters, just like in, “HYSIDHWGDXBU”. However, your chances of remembering the sequence are far greater.
This is due to the fact that you have a concept of what “independence” means that is stored in your long-term memory. You can therefore assign meaning to the sequence of letters so that it becomes effectively one single item rather than 12.
Why Does This Matter?
The limit on the number of items that we can remember over a short period of time is effectively a limit on our processing power.
If we want to manipulate these items in any way then it is likely that we can handle even fewer (some of the five to nine items will be used up in performing the manipulation).
However, as the example of “independence” shows, we can reduce the demands on our processing power – or the cognitive load of a problem – by being able to draw upon concepts that we have stored in our long-term memory.
For example, imagine that you wished to work out 43 x 7 in your head.
A typical approach would be to find 4 x 7 = 28, multiply this by 10 to get 280, find 3 x 7 = 21 and add this to 280 to get 301. This requires you to hold the value of 280 in short-term memory while calculating 21.
This is pretty easy to do if you simply know that 3 x 7 = 21. However, if you also have to work this part out from scratch by repeated addition or some other strategy then you might forget the 280 figure.
