EMI: Cognitive Load

cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988), which posits that “goal attainment and schema acquisition may be two largely unrelated and even incompatible processes” (p. 283). In other words, the demand for resources in performance type reasoning activities in System 2, compete with resources available for learning. According to CLT, there are three types of cognitive load: (1) intrinsic load, which is the load inherent in the learning material itself, (2) extraneous load, which is the load associated with features of the learning material and other processes, and (3) germane load, which is the load associated with combining elements in working memory to create schema (Sweller, van Merriënboer, & Paas, 1998).