Cognitive Load

Cognitive Load
I have hesitated in writing about cognitive load, because it is a topic that has been very much a part of my life for the past three years. Three years ago, my daughter was hit by a car while riding her bike, and suffered a traumatic brain injury. Following her stint in the ICU (11 days in coma), I accompanied her to a locked ward at National Rehabilitation Hospital in DC where I first heard about cognitive load.

I know that is a little heavy for a blog post, but there you have it. Real life. It happens.

So, cognitive load became a part of my vocabulary. Not overwhelming the brain while it was healing. Chunking ideas and words together as she rebuilt her engine. We say she had a restart, the way computers do. She had to put little things back into the system like learning to brush her teeth, and learning to sit, and stand and walk.

Cognitive load is something we still have to watch three years later. She is particularly sensitive to cognitive fatigue, and this is caused by having too much information in her working memory at one time. This causes her to be more tired than your average kid. Recently she had three exams on the same day. She did not do well on any of them, even though she studied and knew the material. We know this is due to cognitive load.

Stress is also a factor in cognitive load. When we have more stress than usual, we tend to slow down, and need more time to process new information. For my part, I developed post-traumatic stress syndrome, and so when I am overwhelmed with a week like this one where I am packing up a room to move elsewhere in the school, and dealing with a crashing computer, AND starting a new class, I tend to slow down and chunk things into little pieces like getting things done on the day they are due.

When we are presenting teachers with new information, we need to be sensitive to the load they are already under, and also, to remind them that their students are not a one size fits all group of kids. Chunking is good for all kids. Accessing prior knowledge is good for all kids. Presenting one concept at a time and building on it is good for all kids.

There is always a silver lining. The lessons we learned in restarting our daughter have made me a better teacher, because I look at each child, and each adult learner as an individual who wants to learn, but who comes with their own ways of accessing the information.