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10 - From Neo-Behaviorism to Neuroscience: Perspectives on the Origins and Future Contributions of Cognitive Load Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Richard E. Clark  and
Vincent P. Clark
Edited by
Jan L. Plass ,
Roxana Moreno  and
Roland Brünken
Richard E. Clark
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Vincent P. Clark
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
Jan L. Plass
Affiliation:
New York University
Roxana Moreno
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
Roland Brünken
Affiliation:
Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany
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Summary

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COGNITIVE LOAD RESEARCH AND THEORY

European and American psychology may have developed in a way that prevented or delayed the development of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) until George Miller's (1956) classic paper on working memory capacity appeared a half century ago. At the beginning of the twentieth century and fifty years before Miller's paper kick-started the field of cognitive science, Charles Hubbard Judd (1908) lost an important argument with Edward Thorndike (1903) about the role of mental effort in the transfer of learning. The loss helped to sidetrack psychology into emphasizing behaviorism over cognitive processing. Judd, an American who was Wilhelm Wundt's student in Leipzig at the end of the nineteenth century, hypothesized that internal cognitive processes and external instructional strategies supported the mental work necessary to transfer knowledge between different problem contexts and settings. Judd had learned from Wundt to emphasize a version of scientific psychology that favored the study of consciousness, problem solving, thinking, and sensations. Judd's (1908) famous bow and arrow experiment demonstrated that effortful cognitive processes could support the generalization of a principle about the diffractive properties of water and so allow people to adjust their aim with the bow to hit an underwater target that appeared to be somewhere else. Thorndike (1903) focused his research on animal maze learning and proposed an “identical elements” transfer theory, arguing that it was positive reinforcement that led to learning and transfer – and not cognitive processing.

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Cognitive Load Theory , pp. 203 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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