The human memory system

Explain what it means to take a cognitive or ‘information

processing’ perspective on learning
Describe the components and characteristics of the human
memory system
Explain human cognitive architecture
Describe the capacities and limits of human cognitive
architecture

Cognition and Cognitive load theory

Explain the implications of human cognitive architecture for

Learning teachers
Describe cognitive load theory
Understand types of cognitive load and how teachers can
manage them
Teaching strategies
Interpret evidence for the effectiveness of a range of teaching
strategies
Identify characteristics of teaching strategies that might impose
or reduce extraneous cognitive load
Know when to deploy various types of teaching strategies at
different stages of the learning process
The Behavioural Perspective
Behaviourism
• Dominated psychology in the first half of
the 20th century.
• Based on reinforcements and rewards:
The environmental conditions that are
associated with behaviour
• ‘Consciousness’ is not important: Better
to study other things that can be more
scientifically observed
How did behaviourists view learning?
• John B. Watson & B. F. Skinner
• Learning is best understood by what you can observe
(i.e. behaviour), rather than internal thought patterns
(i.e. cognition).
• Learning is shaped by the environment in which the
learning takes place: it is this, not the individual
learner that defines what is learnt.
• Adaptation and control over the learning
environment and interactions (reinforcement,
punishment, repetition etc) are central to the learning
process.
Using a behavioural
perspective in teaching

• Focus on rewards
• Deliver them in close proximity to
the desired behaviours
• Be consistent with the rewards and
the desired behaviours will be
conditioned
Does the chicken know how to play
the song?
The Cognitive Perspective
aka ‘Information Processing’ perspective
Information Processing
• The human mind’s activity of taking in,
storing, and using information.
• Pays close attention to the inner
workings of the mind.
• Like a computer model in the sense
that it there is input, process, and
output, but the major focus is on the
processes.
Modal model
Sensory: largely responsible for input
working memory is very limited
Long-term: save memory
Long-Term Memory
Two Stories

The student spoke to the department

head about her instructor’s sexist
comments

The paratrooper leaped out of the door.

Types of Long-Term Memory knowledge about how to do
things. knowledge about
physical movement

occurs when an individual's

exposure to a certain stimulus
influences their response to a
subsequent prompt, without any
awareness of the connection
Implicit memory the information that we do not store purposely and is unintentionally memorised

About concept,
ideas ,propositions and
relations and rules between
them

general world knowledge

that humans have
accumulated throughout their
lives
Event - that usually
Declarative or explicit memory is devoted to processing of names, dates, places, facts, events, and so forth information come to your
mind - like how you feel
What is encoded? Schemas
Information is encoded in long-term memory as schemas. Semantic networks
(shown in the diagram) give a representation to how schemas work:
Pinker, S. (2014). The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century . New York, NY: Penguin
Novak, J. D. (2013). Concept mapping. In J. Hattie & E. M. Anderman (Eds.), International guide to student achievement. Routledge.
Propositions “Ariel bought her
• A proposition is the smallest unit of mum Sue a coffee
information that can be ‘proposed’ maker from Bing Lee”
or judged true or false.
• This sentence has four propositions SUE IS ARIEL’S
ARIEL BOUGHT
THE COFFEE
• The propositions are related to each MOTHER
MAKER

other
• The propositional network is the unit THE COFFEE BING LEE SOLD
MAKER IS FOR THE COFFEE
of meaning SUE MAKER
Characteristics of Long-Term Memory
• It is a storage system
• Capacity: Probably unlimited
• Limitations
• Things can be forgotten over time
• How do things get in to long-term memory?
• Encoding—takes effort.
• How do things get back into working memory?
• Retrieval (think of it as ‘activation’ or ‘reconstruction’)
Sensory Memory
What does sensory memory do?
• Briefly holds information in ‘registers.’ It processes for you in a very brief way?

• Perceives everything
• We are not conscious of it
• Stimuli are processed in a very basic way
• Lasts <2 seconds
• Does some very basic feature analysis
• Helps to direct attention to important things
User:Almonroth, CC BY-SA 3.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oak_tree_with_moon_and_wildflowers.jpg
What does sensory memory do?

What information does sensory

memory use to do this?

When people use #nofilter, what

are they not understanding
about sensory memory?
Working Memory
• The workbench of the human
memory system
• Processes information Working
• Temporary ‘storage’ memory
• Your consciousness—everything
you are experiencing ‘right now’
 Working Memory

Central Executive

Visuospatial
Phonological Loop Episodic Buffer
Sketchpad

Long-term Memory
(4 + 5) × 2
3 + (12 / 4)
If you rotate p by
180 degrees, do
you get b or d?
Maintenance rehearsal:
• Holding information in working memory.
Example: Repeating a phone number.
Elaborative rehearsal
Keeping
• Chunking and connecting the information in
information with schemas in long-term
memory so that it can be assimilated.
working memory
• Example: Connecting phone number to
a date.

9 3 8 5 1 9 7 0
Characteristics of Working Memory
• It is amazing!
• Sophisticated relationship with long-term memory
• In function, it is the ‘workbench’ of the memory system
• In capacity, it is the ‘bottleneck’ of the memory system
• Extremely limited capacity
• 7±2 items (for novel information)
• Duration: up to 15 or 20 seconds
Some ideas about encoding Some ideas about retrieval

• Information needs to be given meaning • You need to do it frequently

• (Recall ‘maintenance rehearsal’ and • “Retrieval practice” (sometimes called the
‘elaborative rehearsal’) “testing effect”)
• Types of learning (these concepts come from • When you retrieve things, they are reconstructed.
Piaget)
• Environmental cues can help (those that were
• Assimilation (aligning with what is already present at time of encoding)
known)
• Accommodation (making room for new
information)
• What does this mean for novel information?
• What does this mean for your lesson plans?
An Evolutionary Perspective
Information Processing
• The human memory system is an information processing
system.
• It evolved in humans. Evolution itself is an information
processing system.
• The human information processing system has similar
characteristics to evolution itself
• The information processing system is not the only system used
for learning
 Biologically Primary Biologically Secondary
Knowledge Knowledge

Skills we acquire naturally with no Knowledge and skills we are not

special motivation requirements. directly evolved to acquire. We need
Examples: to acquire it because it is culturally
important.
➤ Speaking and language
Examples:
➤ Facial recognition
➤ Reading and writing
➤ Basic statistics and logic
➤ More advanced mathematics
➤ Organising information
➤ Most things we learn at school
➤ Problem solving
 Principle Function
Information store Store information

Borrowing and reorganising Obtain information from others

Randomness as genesis Generate novel information

Restrict randomness to protect the

Narrow limits of change
information store

Use stored information to determine

Environmental organising and linking
action in a given environment

Sweller, J. (2011). Cognitive load theory. In J. P. Mestre & B. H. Ross (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 55,
pp. 37–76). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-387691-1.00002-8
Cognitive Load Theory
A theory of instruction (teaching and learning) based on the
capacities and limitations of human cognitive architecture.
Cognitive Load Theory
Learning is a change in long-term memory. Our goal as teachers is to help students form
schemas for concepts and ideas in long-term memory. These concepts and ideas are
usually novel (otherwise we wouldn’t need to teach them!).
To help students form schemas, we design learning activities (e.g., worksheets,
experiments, practising, discussions, problem sets, lecturing) and ways of presenting
information to learners (e.g., visual displays, notes, diagrams, presentations).
Because the thing we are teaching them is novel, it consumes working memory. We call
this intrinsic cognitive load—the working memory that is consumed is intrinsic to the
concept being learned.
The activities and presentations themselves can also consume working memory. This is
OK if the activities are helping them to learn the novel concept. In this case, we also
classify the activities and presentations as part of the intrinsic cognitive load.
But sometimes the activities and presentations that consume working memory do not help
to learn the novel concept. That means they impose working memory load, but that load on
working memory is not contributing to learning. For this reason, we classify that part of the
working memory load as extraneous cognitive load.
Working Memory Capacity
 This student is learning simultaneous equations

Working with new kinds of

Basic
visual displays
Algebra, Simple Elimination Method:
order of equations: “First, multiply the terms
operations 4x + 3y = 2 in…”
etc
In this case, the teacher is explaining how to do simultaneous equations

! ! !
Teacher talk:
Basic
Working with new kinds of “First what I want you to
Algebra, Simple Elimination Method:
visual displays do is open your books.
order of equations: “First, multiply the terms
Look at the chart. See how
operations 4x + 3y = 2 in…”
we are going to get the
etc
first term…..”

This stuff is novel. It is consuming working

This stuff is well-known memory.
in long-term memory, so
doesn’t consume much In this case we assume it is contributing to
working memory. learning about simultaneous equations. So
we call it intrinsic cognitive load.
 In this case, the teacher has used a problem-solving task:
“See if you can find a way to solve these exciting equations!”

! ! !
Basic
New kind of unseen Brainstorm / Google
Algebra, Simple Attempting to select from
problem: search of ideas and
order of equations: the range of potential
4x + 3y = 2 reading through the
operations 4x + 3y = 2 strategies.
2x + 4y = 15 results.
etc

😕🤷😩
Elimination
method

Substitution
method
Prior
knowledge Intrinsic
required for cognitive
the task load
Extraneous Cognitive Load
None of this is contributing to learning
What does this mean for teaching?
• Intrinsic cognitive load
• Simplify tasks by omitting some of the interacting elements.
• Sequence tasks from simple to complex
• Don’t do too much in a single lesson
• Extraneous cognitive load
• By definition, extraneous cognitive load must be reduced and
eliminated because it hinders learning.
• What are the things that reduce (or increase) extraneous cognitive
load?
Effect Description
Variability Under low intrinsic cognitive load, increased variability increases
intrinsic load resulting in increased learning if working memory
resources are available
Isolated elements Under high intrinsic cognitive load, presenting interacting elements as
though they are isolated can decrease intrinsic load
Goal-free Eliminating a problem goal eliminates the use of means-ends analysis

Worked example
reducing extraneous cognitive load
Demonstrating a problem solution reduces the extraneous cognitive
load associated with problem solving
Cognitive load
Split-attention

Modality
If mental integration is required, extraneous cognitive load may be
reduced by physically integrating disparate sources of information
Mental integration can be facilitated by presenting material using
theory effects
audiovisual rather than a visual only format Sweller, J. (2011). Cognitive load theory. In J. P. Mestre & B. H. Ross
Redundancy Processing unnecessary information imposes an extraneous cognitive (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 55, pp. 37–
load 76). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/
B978-0-12-387691-1.00002-8
Element Interactivity If intrinsic cognitive load is low, a high extraneous cognitive load may
not exceed working memory capacity, reducing extraneous cognitive
load effects
Expertise reversal Information that is essential for novices may be redundant for experts Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is an instructional design theory that
reversing the relative effectiveness of instructional designs deals with how the human brain processes and stores information
Problem completion Similar to the worked example effect based on partial worked
examples and can be used during guidance fading
Guidance fading Due to expertise reversal, as expertise increases, the guidance
provided by worked examples should be decreased and eventually
eliminated
Imagination With sufficient expertise, imagining procedures or concepts can be
more effective than studying
Transient information The use of technology can transform permanent into transient
information increasing extraneous cognitive load
Split attention effect
 Split attention effect
Follow the numbered steps
We assume that the tool is located at the origin. Firstly, we have to instruct the machine to quickly
go to the point A. The NC command for a quick movement without cutting is G00 and is denoted Y
with a broken line. We also have to instruct the machine where to go. Point A has the absolute 7 A straight line cut from A to B is 6 The complete command for this
position (20, 30). The NC command for a movement to the point A is X20 Y30. The complete required movement is therefore G00 X20 Y30
command for this movement is therefore G00 X20 Y30. A straight line cut from A to B is required. 8 The NC command for a straight
The NC command for a straight line cut is G01 and is denoted by an unbroken line. We now have line cut is G01 and is denoted by 40 5 Point A has the absolute position (20, 30).
to instruct the machine to cut to point B. To achieve this the NC command for the point B is an unbroken line The NC command for a movement to the
point A is X 20 Y30
required. The NC command for point B is X-20 Y10. The complete command for this movement is 9 We now have to instruct the machine A
G01 X-20 Y10. The NC com- mand to return the tool back to the origin is simply G00 X0 Y0. This to cut to the point B 30 4 We also have to instruct the machine where
completes the NC program code for this job. to go
10 To achieve this the NC command
for the point B is required. 3 The NC command for a quick movement without
20
Y The NC command for the point B is cutting is G00 and is denoted with a broken line
X-20 Y10
40
B 10
11 The complete command for this 2 Firstly, we have to instruct the machine
Y
30
A movement is G01 X-20 Y10 to quickly go to the point A
40
-40 -30 -20 -10 10 20 30 40
A
20
30
-X X
20
B 10
-10
12 The NC command to return the 1 We assume that the tool is
B 10
-X -40 -30 -20 -10 10 20 30 40
X tool back to the origin is simply located at the origin
-X -40 -30 -20 -10 10 20 30 40 X
G00 X0 Y0
-20
-10
-10

-20
-20 -30
-30

workpiece -30
-40 workpiece
-40
workpiece -Y
-40

-Y -Y

Chandler & Sweller, 1992

 4. Turn right on W 4th Street

Redundancy Effect 3. Follow two blocks along

6th Avenue

2. Turn left on 6th Avenue

Avoid redundant graphics (e.g., pictures when
teaching children to read words), stories, and 1. Take Carmine St to the
lengthy text (e.g., additional concrete materials intersection with 6th Avenue
in mathematical word problems)
Repetition is not redundancy!
General rule: integrate if sources of referring
information are unintelligible in isolation, but
eliminate if they are intelligible in isolation

Chandler and Sweller (1991)

Element Interactivity Effect

Low element interactivity High element interactivity

Vocabulary or list of words Grammar structures and rules

Understanding how the muscles and

Names and functions of bones and
bones work together to perform
muscles in the body
movement

Electrical circuit diagrams and their

Interpreting an actual diagram
symbols

With low element interactivity, intrinsic load is so low that extraneous load might not matter too much.
Worked Example Effect
Probably the most well known
cognitive load theory effect
Provide worked examples
(expert problem solutions) in a
step-by-step manner alongside
pure problems.
Expertise Reversal Effect
These strategies
(providing worked
examples, reducing split
attention) start to become
less effective as learners
learn!
What are the implications for planning a
lesson?
• What do you start with?
• What kinds of activities occupy students’ time?
• How do you conclude?
Explicit Instruction
Explicit Instruction
• High levels of guidance and support
from the teacher
• Extension of learners’ prior knowledge
• Consideration of the capacities and
limitations of human cognitive
architecture
• Emphasis on learning as the priority
for instructional activity
Evans, P., & Martin, A. J. (2021). (in press).
• Active student engagement Explicit instruction. In A. O’Donnell & J. Reeve
throughout the learning process (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Educational
Pscychology. Oxford University Press.
Explicit Instruction
• High levels of guidance and support
from the teacher
• Extension of learners’ prior knowledge
• Consideration of the capacities and
limitations of human cognitive
architecture
• Emphasis on learning as the priority
for instructional activity
• Active student engagement What would be
throughout the learning process the opposite of
this?
Direct Instruction
In Project Follow Through, Direct Instruction was
one of the programs that was tested
• Role of the teacher was to design and control
variables of the learning environment (schedule,
presentation of material, its form etc).
• Learning is evidenced in behaviour
• Communications were carefully designed to be
“faultless”
• Lessons are often scripted (but teachers adapt
when things don’t go as expected)
• Errors are corrected, correct responses or
behaviours are reinforced
• Students are constantly engaged—speaking,
responding, writing, etc.
Direct Instruction

Siegfried ‘Zig’ Engelmann (1931–2019)

Direct Instruction
Principles of Instruction
• Barack Rosenshine (1930–2017)
• Based on emergent cognitive science
(particularly working memory
limitations; role of prior knowledge)
• Strategies that are common to
effective programs
• Rosenshine coined ‘explicit
instruction’ (in 1986)
• Sometimes referred to as a kind of
direct instruction
Ambiguity of ‘direct instruction’
It could refer to:
1. Any instruction where there is a teacher

😩
2. Outcomes of the teacher effects research (e.g.,
Project Follow Through)
3. Teaching cognitive and metacognitive strategies
4. Programs like DISTAR or Reading Mastery
5. Perjorative uses to refer, usually incorrectly, to
teacher directed, authoritarian instruction,
lecturing, etc
Explicit Instruction
• High levels of guidance and support
from the teacher direct instruction
• Extension of learners’ prior knowledge
• Consideration of the capacities and Basis in human cognitive
architecture Direct Instruction
limitations of human cognitive
architecture
Research on effective
• Emphasis on learning as the priority teaching (reforms,
interventions, meta-analysis
for instructional activity etc)

• Active student engagement What would be

throughout the learning process
the opposite of
this?
‘Minimal
guidance’
Load Reduction
Instruction

Martin, A. J., & Evans, P. (2019). Load reduction instruction (LRI): Sequencing
explicit instruction and guided discovery to enhance students’ motivation,
engagement, learning, and achievement. In J. Sweller, S. Tindall-Ford, & S.
Agostinho (Eds.), Advances in cognitive load theory: Rethinking teaching.
Routledge.
 Evidence from:
• Interventions using
Engelmann’s DI
Learning • Studies on teaching for
academically at-risk students
• Meta-analytic evidence from
survey research
Metacognition and • Randomised, controlled trials
self-regulated and experimental research

Explicit learning • Correlational research on load-

reduction instruction
Instruction
Motivation and
engagement

Problem-solving,
creativity, critical
thinking
David Didau
https://learningspy.co.uk/psychology/novices-become-experts/
On problem solving
• Doing problem solving
activities does not make
you better at problem
solving.
• Problem solving is
biologically primary (using
means-ends analysis
• If there is any specific
problem solving skill, it is
domain specific
Example of a problem solving situation

“Explain threats to Australia’s economic prosperity in coming decades.”

sports
Canberra

Fossil
fun Fuels

island Australia

Novice
Expert
High Impact Teaching
Strategies
How would you structure a lesson?
Beginning?
Middle?
End?

What is your role during the lesson?

Victorian Government (2020). HIGH
IMPACT TEACHING STRATEGIES:
Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/
school/teachers/teachingresources/
practice/improve/Pages/hits.aspx
Victorian Government (2020). HIGH
IMPACT TEACHING STRATEGIES:
Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/
school/teachers/teachingresources/
practice/improve/Pages/hits.aspx
Visible Learning
The original publication: Visible
Learning (right): outlines the
approach to ‘evidence’ and
effect sizes

Summary of the effects: https://

www.visiblelearningmetax.com
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.