Editing Cognitive load (section)

===Extraneous===
''Extraneous cognitive load'' is generated by the manner in which information is presented to learners and is under the control of instructional designers.<ref name="Chandler & Sweller, 1991" /> This load can be attributed to the design of the instructional materials. Because there is a single limited cognitive resource using resources to process the extraneous load, the number of resources available to process the intrinsic load and germane load (i.e., learning) is reduced. Thus, especially when intrinsic and/or germane load is high (i.e., when a problem is difficult), materials should be designed so as to reduce the extraneous load.<ref name="Ginns, 2006">{{cite journal |last1=Ginns |first1=Paul |title=Integrating information: A meta-analysis of the spatial contiguity and temporal contiguity effects |journal=Learning and Instruction |date=December 2006 |volume=16 |issue=6 |pages=511–525 |doi=10.1016/j.learninstruc.2006.10.001 }}</ref>

An example of extraneous cognitive load occurs when there are two possible ways to describe a square to a student.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Clark |first1=Ruth C. |last2=Nguyen |first2=Frank |last3=Sweller |first3=John |title=Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load |date=2005 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-0-7879-7728-3 }}{{page needed|date=July 2020}}</ref> A square is a figure and should be described using a figural medium. Certainly an instructor can describe a square in a verbal medium, but it takes just a second and far less effort to see what the instructor is talking about when a learner is shown a square, rather than having one described verbally. In this instance, the efficiency of the visual medium is preferred. This is because it does not unduly load the learner with unnecessary information. This unnecessary cognitive load is described as extraneous.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

Chandler and Sweller introduced the concept of extraneous cognitive load. This article was written to report the results of six experiments that they conducted to investigate this working memory load. Many of these experiments involved materials demonstrating the [[split attention effect]]. They found that the format of instructional materials either promoted or limited learning. They proposed that differences in performance were due to higher levels of the cognitive load imposed by the format of instruction. "Extraneous cognitive load" is a term for this unnecessary (artificially induced) cognitive load.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

Extraneous cognitive load may have different components, such as the clarity of texts or interactive demands of educational software.<ref name="Skulmowski & Rey, 2020">{{cite journal |last1=Skulmowski |first1=Alexander |last2=Rey |first2=Günter Daniel |title=Subjective cognitive load surveys lead to divergent results for interactive learning media |journal=Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies |date=2020 |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=149–157 |doi=10.1002/hbe2.184 |doi-access=free }}</ref>