Abstract
This study had two main purposes. First, to test how the availability of documents in multiple document reading might affect students’ levels of cognitive load. Secondly, to develop an instrument that captures the different sources of load when working with multiple documents. A total of 125 secondary school students read four short texts on transgenic foods and subsequently responded to an open-ended question that required them to write an essay expressing their personal stance towards the topic. Participants in the experimental treatment condition (n = 54) were allowed to go back to the texts any time during the essay task, whereas their peers in the control condition (n = 71) were not allowed to do so. As hypothesized through the lens of cognitive load theory, the cognitive load arising from cognitive processes that in themselves do not contribute to learning (i.e., extraneous cognitive load) was somewhat lower in the experimental treatment condition, probably due to split attention effects in the control condition. However, no statistically significant differences were found in perceived task complexity or learning task performance. A reliable instrument to measure different sources of intrinsic and extraneous load in multiple document reading is provided. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.
Highlights
Reading and multiple document handling skills are a very important asset in our information society where we are drowning in information coming from all kinds of channels
Mann-Whitney’s p < 0.001; for integration, Welch’s p = 0.036, Mann-Whitney’s p = 0.019. bPositive differences indicate higher mean scores in the experimental treatment condition. cBF01 is the inverse of BF10 (i.e., BF01 = 1 / BF10)
The Cognitive Load questionnaire for Multiple Document Reading (CL-MDR) provides a measurement instrument that is well anchored in cognitive load theory (Sweller et al, 2011; Leppink and Van den Heuvel, 2015; Leppink et al, 2015) and previous research on the measurement of cognitive load (Leppink et al, 2013, 2014; Lafleur et al, 2015) as well as in contemporary theory on multiple documents reading such as MD-TRACE (Rouet and Britt, 2011) and models of purposeful reading such as RESOLV (Rouet et al, 2017)
Summary
Reading and multiple document handling skills are a very important asset in our information society where we are drowning in information coming from all kinds of channels. To be efficient and appropriately select and read the set of documents that might help students accomplish their goals, strategic decisions have to be made such as selecting some documents and discarding others. They will have to engage in reading processes to understand the single documents and to make interconnections among the selected documents. Solving tasks based on multiple documents presents considerable challenges to an individual’s text processing skills, and appropriate training of these skills can be of use in formal education as well as in everyday life and lifelong learning
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