Working Memory Resource Depletion Effect in Academic Learning: Steps to an Integrated Approach

Abstract

Learning at school requires cognitive effort. Optimizing these efforts is one of the keys to academic learning achievement. Many controlled experiments, for example within the cognitive load theory framework, have identified the factors that impact this optimization. The temporal dimension of this optimization was evoked in 2018: certain academic learning tasks could exhaust students, resulting on learning impairing. The hypothesis of Sweller and other authors from cognitive load theory is that working memory resources would be depleted during a demanding learning task. The authors point out that this depletion of working memory resources could explain a famous effect in learning literature: the massed/spaced effect. But these authors do not say: What mechanisms govern this exhaustion? How can this depletion be measured? The working memory resource depletion effect project proposes to answer these questions. Our aim is to present this project, its objectives, method and the first results.