Lower Mental Effort Research Articles

Evaluating an obstetrics and gynecology teaching program for medical students incorporating simulation-based education underpinned by cognitive load theory.

Although there have been previous publications on curriculum innovations in teaching O&G to medical students, especially utilizing simulation-based education, there have been none, as far as we know, incorporating and evaluating the outcomes using cognitive load theory. The aim of this article was to describe the introduction, implementation, and evaluation of an innovative teaching program in O&G, incorporating simulation-based education, underpinned by cognitive load theory. Cognitive load is defined as the amount of information a working memory can hold at any one time and incorporates three types of cognitive load-intrinsic, extraneous, and germane. To optimize learning, educators are encouraged to manage intrinsic cognitive load, minimize extraneous cognitive load, and promote germane cognitive load. In these sessions, students were encouraged to prepare in advance of each session with recommended reading materials; to limit intrinsic cognitive load and promote germane cognitive load, faculty were advised ahead of each session to manage intrinsic cognitive load, an open-book MCQ practice session aimed to reduce anxiety, promote psychological safety, and minimize extraneous cognitive load. For the simulation sessions, the faculty initially demonstrated the role-play situation or clinical skill first, to manage intrinsic cognitive load and reduce extraneous cognitive load. The results of the evaluation showed that the students perceived that they invested relatively low mental effort in understanding the topics, theories, concepts, and definitions discussed during the sessions. There was a low extraneous cognitive load. Measures of germane cognitive load or self-perceived learning were high. The primary message is that we believe this teaching program is a model that other medical schools globally might want to consider adopting, to evaluate and justify innovations in the teaching of O&G to medical students. The secondary message is that evaluation of innovations to teaching and facilitation of learning using cognitive load theory is one way to contribute to the high-quality training of competent future healthcare workers required to provide the highest standard of care to women who are crucial to the overall health and wellbeing of a nation.

Video Captioning and Subtitles in Second Language Listening Comprehension: Fast-Paced Versus Slow-Paced Speakers.

The present study examines the impact of implementing video captioning and subtitles on listening comprehension with special reference to the speaker's speed. A total of 64 undergraduate Saudi EFL learners were assigned into six groups: fast speaker with full captioning, fast speaker with subtitles, fast speaker with no captioning nor subtitles, slow speaker with full captioning, and slow speaker with subtitles, slow speaker with no captioning nor subtitles. Each group was instructed to watch a video in English under its assigned condition and then answered a listening test. Participants also answered a questionnaire to determine the impact of these conditions on their cognitive load. The results revealed that the group that viewed the video of slow speakers with a caption obtained the highest score on the listening comprehension test, followed by the group that viewed the video of fast speakers with a caption. The group that viewed no caption video of fast speakers obtained the lowest scores. The questionnaire analysis indicated that the students in the subtitle slow group reported using low mental effort, whereas the students in the caption fast group reported using very high mental effort followed by the students in the caption slow group who also reported using high mental effort.

Individualized Mental Fatigue Does Not Impact Neuromuscular Function and Exercise Performance.

Recent studies have questioned previous empirical evidence that mental fatigue negatively impacts physical performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the critical role of individual differences in mental fatigue susceptibility by analyzing the neurophysiological and physical responses to an individualized mental fatigue task. In a pre-registered (https://osf.io/xc8nr/), randomized, within-participant design experiment, twenty-two recreational athletes completed a time to failure test at 80% of their peak power output under mental fatigue (individual mental effort) or control (low mental effort). Before and after the cognitive tasks, subjective feeling of mental fatigue, neuromuscular function of the knee extensors, and corticospinal excitability were measured. Sequential Bayesian analysis until it reached strong evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis (BF10 > 6) or the null hypothesis (BF10 < 1/6) were conducted. The individualized mental effort task resulted in a higher subjective feeling of mental fatigue in the mental fatigue condition: 0.50 (95%CI 0.39 - 0.62) AU compared to control: 0.19 (95%CI 0.06 - 0.339) AU. However, exercise performance was similar in both conditions (control; 410 (95%CI 357 - 463) vs. mental fatigue 422 (95%CI 367 - 477) seconds, BF10 = 0.15). Likewise, mental fatigue did not impair knee extensor maximal force generating capacity (BF10 = 0.928) and did not change the extent of fatigability or its origin after the cycling exercise. There is no evidence that mental fatigue adversely affects neuromuscular function or physical exercise, even if mental fatigue is individualized, computerized tasks seem not to affect physical performance.

Outdoor Science Approach with Peer Tutoring at University Level as an Example of Implementing Sustainable Development Strategies

(1) Background: Education for sustainable development emphasizes the need to train future teachers to apply effective approaches to ensure the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the 2030 Agenda. (2) Methods: The research aim was to determine empirical data to introduce an outdoor science teaching approach with peer tutoring to teacher candidates through its impact on their performance, i.e., achievement, perceived mental effort, and opinion on the applied approach. The applied approach represents the integration of physics and geography through the elective course homeland geography at the Faculty of Teacher Education in Belgrade. Students performed outdoor measurements of physical quantities in created tasks. The tasks aimed to engage students’ spatial thinking and critical observation skills, whereas the use of verbal skills and content presentation skills was encouraged through peer tutoring. (3) Results: The research results showed a positive impact of an outdoor science teaching approach with peer tutoring on students’ achievement. Additionally, we found that perceived mental effort decreases with the use of this approach. Lower mental effort indicated more space in working memory, which can be used for processing new information. Therefore, obtained results indicated that the applied teaching approach is suitable for students. (4) Conclusions: The obtained results should incentivize other faculties that train future teachers to apply an outdoor teaching approach with peer tutoring. As a result of preparing future teachers in a way that promotes awareness of sustainable development and the local environment, it can be expected that young people will be more interested in solving these important issues because they will see them in their environment and be connected to them.

Using pointing gestures to convey tactical information: investigating the roles of expertise and complexity.

Coach's speech and pointing gestures are closely related. However, the question of whether the coach's pointing gestures influence the learning of complex game systems is still unclear. The present study examined the moderating roles of content complexity and expertise level on recall performance, visual attention, and mental effort through the coach's pointing gestures. One hundred and ninety-two novice and expert basketball players were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions (simple content + no-gesture, simple content + with-gesture, more complex content + no-gesture, or more complex content + with-gesture). The results showed that regardless of the complexity of the content, novices showed significantly better recall performance, better visual search on the static diagrams and lower mental effort in the with-gesture condition than in the no-gesture condition. However, the results showed that experts benefited equally from both conditions (with-gesture and no-gestures) when the content was simple, whereas they benefited more from the condition with-gesture when the content was more complex. The findings and their implications for the design of learning materials are discussed in terms of cognitive load theory.

Design and Evaluation of Bare-Hand Interaction for Precise Manipulation of Distant Objects in AR

Interaction with virtual objects is one of the essential features of Augmented Reality (AR) systems. One of its main issues is how to provide precise manipulation of distant virtual objects in AR. In this work, we explore bare-hand manipulation of distant objects in AR with DOF (degree-of-freedom) separation, motion scaling, and near-field metaphors. We developed two manipulation techniques: the distant widget-based metaphor (DWBM), and the near-field widget-based metaphor (NFWBM). We conducted a user study with 20 participants to compare the two techniques in terms of performance and user experience. We found that NFWBM has faster speed, lower mental effort, better ease-of-use, and a friendlier user experience. However, there is no significant difference in terms of precision; both techniques could manipulate distant objects precisely, with an average position error of less than 0.7 cm and an average orientational error of less than 1°. We also discussed the limitations of this research and directions for future work.

Advancing the study of solving linear equations with negative pronumerals: A smarter way from a cognitive load perspective.

Central to cognitive load theory is the concept of element interactivity, which reflects the complexity of material. The complexity of linear equations depends on the number of operational and relational lines and the nature of the operation (balance versus inverse) in the solution procedure. A relational line refers to the quantitative relation whereby the right-hand side of the equation equals to its left-hand side. An operational line refers to the application of an operation and such a procedural step preserves the equality of the linear equation. The balance method and inverse method differ in the operational line (e.g., + 3 on both sides vs.– 3 becomes + 3) where the inverse operation imposes half the level of element interactivity as the balance method. Seventy-five students randomly assigned to either the balance group or inverse group to complete (i) one-step equations (Experiment 1), (ii) two-step equations (Experiment 2), and (iii) one-step and two-step equations with a focus on equations with negative pronumerals (Experiment 3). Performance favoured the inverse group when the gap between the low and high element interactivity equations was substantial enough. Both groups performed better and invested lower mental effort on the inverse operation than the balance operation.

Consumer preference for fish safety inspection in Bangladesh

Consumers are entitled to eat safe food, so authorities should ensure that this right is preserved by enacting regulations and ensuring compliance through enforcement activities. Safety inspection is key to the enforcement system. Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of consumer responses to a regulatory scheme for safe seafood. The regulations consist of national and local authority enforcement and subsequent follow up activities to ensure that all wild and farmed fish in all product formats are safe. We collected primary data from two major cities in Bangladesh, Dhaka and Chittagong. The data were analysed using conditional and generic multinomial logit models to identify different utility ratios. We find that consumers expect safety control information at a low mental cost or effort. They value fish safety inspection highly in their affective reaction, whereas this value is lacking in their cognitive response. The individual parameter estimates show that consumers' preferences for both wild and farmed fish are significantly positive. They are most likely to reject frozen fish and be willing to pay less for it. Wild-caught fish creates utility for consumers without any food safety inspection, but this is not the case for farmed, frozen fish. The lack of authorised food safety inspection significantly decreases utility, suggesting a positive market potential, particularly for farmed fish with local authority safety certification.

Mental Effort Estimation by Passive BCI: A Cross-Subject Analysis.

Despite the technological advancements, the employment of passive brain computer interface (BCI) out of the laboratory context is still challenging. This is largely due to methodological reasons. On the one hand, machine learning methods have shown their potential in maximizing performance for user mental states classification. On the other hand, the issues related to the necessary and frequent calibration of algorithms and to the temporal resolution of the measurement (i.e. how long it takes to have a reliable state measure) are still unsolved. This work explores the performances of a passive BCI system for mental effort monitoring consisting of three frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) channels. In particular, three calibration approaches have been tested: an intra-subject approach, a cross-subject approach, and a free-calibration procedure based on the simple average of theta activity over the three employed channels. A Random Forest model has been employed in the first two cases. The results obtained during multi-tasking have shown that the cross-subject approach allows the classification of low and high mental effort with an AUC higher than 0.9, with a related time resolution of 45 seconds. Moreover, these performances are not significantly different from the intra-subject approach although they are significantly higher than the calibration-free approach. In conclusion, these results suggest that a light (three EEG channels) passive BCI system based on a Random Forest algorithm and cross-subject calibration could be a simple and reliable tool for out-of-the-lab employment.

Eye See What You See: Exploring How Bi-Directional Augmented Reality Gaze Visualisation Influences Co-Located Symmetric Collaboration

Gaze is one of the predominant communication cues and can provide valuable implicit information such as intention or focus when performing collaborative tasks. However, little research has been done on how virtual gaze cues combining spatial and temporal characteristics impact real-life physical tasks during face to face collaboration. In this study, we explore the effect of showing joint gaze interaction in an Augmented Reality (AR) interface by evaluating three bi-directional collaborative (BDC) gaze visualisations with three levels of gaze behaviours. Using three independent tasks, we found that all bi-directional collaborative BDC visualisations are rated significantly better at representing joint attention and user intention compared to a non-collaborative (NC) condition, and hence are considered more engaging. The Laser Eye condition, spatially embodied with gaze direction, is perceived significantly more effective as it encourages mutual gaze awareness with a relatively low mental effort in a less constrained workspace. In addition, by offering additional virtual representation that compensates for verbal descriptions and hand pointing, BDC gaze visualisations can encourage more conscious use of gaze cues coupled with deictic references during co-located symmetric collaboration. We provide a summary of the lessons learned, limitations of the study, and directions for future research.

EDUCATIONAL EFFICIENCY AND STUDENTS’ INVOLVEMENT OF TEACHING APPROACH BASED ON GAME-BASED STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEM

Modern approaches in Physics classes which involve the game-based student response system (GSRS) have been in use for a while, but their educational efficiency and students’ involvement have not been examined. Therefore, this research’s main aim was to determine the educational efficiency and students’ involvement of GSRS and to assess their effect on scientific reasoning. The values of educational efficiency and students’ involvement were calculated based on students’ achievement and perceived mental effort. To determine these values, a pedagogical experiment with parallel groups was applied. The research was conducted on a sample of 172 secondary school students, and included material related to direct currents. The results point to positive and higher values of the educational efficiency and students’ involvement for GSRS approach than the conventional approach. It means that GSRS approach causes lower mental effort, letting more space generate in the working memory to perceive and process new information. The results also show a positive effect of GSRS on higher students’ engagement during the class and scientific reasoning. The obtained results undoubtedly indicate the positive effect of GSRS on the students’ performance. Therefore, GSRS approach should be used often in the classroom. Keywords: educational efficiency, students’ involvement, GSRS, scientific reasoning, teaching physics

Application of VIPSTA experiment worksheet: an attempt to reduce students cognitive load in learning biology

This research aimed to analyse the decrease in students’ cognitive load while performing laboratory activity using “VIPSTA” experiment worksheet. The subjects of the research were 72 students in grade 11. The cognitive load was measured in three aspects; intrinsic cognitive load (ICL), extraneous cognitive load (ECL), and germane cognitive load (GCL). The data were analysed descriptively to show differences in the component of cognitive loads and tested for multivariate correlation-regression to show relations between the components of cognitive load. ICL and GCL were measured inversely proportional with score of students science process skill, due to well performed science process skill and knowledge construction skill are results from low ICL and GCL respectively. Whereas ECL was measured proportionally with students’ metal effort because students bear low mental effort in thinking when the ECL is low. After the implementation of VIPSTA experiment worksheet, students obtained increment for science processing skill and knowledge construction skill and decrease for mental effort which indicated low ICL, GCL, and ECL. Meaning that the use of VIPSTA experiment worksheet enables a decrease in students’ cognitive load. Furthermore, the data analysis showed that the decrease of GCL was heavily influenced by the decrease of ICL and ECL indicating that VIPSTA experiment worksheet was able provide meaningful laboratory activity by facilitating knowledge construction through lower load in processing information and performing procedure while conducting experiment.

Codesign and Usability Testing of a Mobile Application to Support Family-Delivered Enteral Tube Care.

Enteral tubes are prevalent among children with medical complexity (CMC), and complications can lead to costly health care use. Our objective was to design and test the usability of a mobile application (app) to support family-delivered enteral tube care. Human-centered design methods (affinity diagramming, persona development, and software development) were applied with family caregivers of CMC to develop a prototype. During 3 waves of usability testing with design refinement between waves, screen capture software collected user-app interactions and inductive content analysis of narrative feedback identified areas for design improvement. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index and the System Usability Scale quantified mental workload and ease of use. Design participants identified core app functions, including displaying care routines, reminders, tracking inventory and health data, caregiver communication, and troubleshooting. Usability testing participants were 80% non-Hispanic white, 28% lived in rural settings, and 20% had not completed high school. Median years providing enteral care was 2 (range 1-14). Design iterations improved app function, simplification, and user experience. The mean System Usability Scale score was 76, indicating above-average usability. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index revealed low mental demand, frustration, and effort. All 14 participants reported that they would recommend the app, and that the app would help with organization, communication, and caregiver transitions. Using a human-centered codesign process, we created a highly usable mobile application to support enteral tube caregiving at home. Future work involves evaluating the feasibility of longitudinal use and effectiveness in improving self-efficacy and reduce device complications.

Flipping the Classroom to Enhance Academic Vocabulary Learning in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Course

The present study explores the efficiency of the flipped classroom approach on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ academic vocabulary acquisition in comparison with the conventional teaching approach. The efficiency is examined by evaluating students’ post-test performance, self-perceived mental effort employed in completing post-test tasks, and perceptions regarding the learning experiences. To this end, 60 undergraduates divided into flipped (E) and conventional (C) group participated in the survey. Quantitative data analysis revealed that the flipped classroom approach showed higher instructional efficiency than the conventional approach as the E group significantly outperformed the C group and reported investing considerably lower mental effort in completing the post-test tasks. In addition, the E group expressed significantly more positive perceptions toward the learning experience than the C group. Considering the positive results obtained in the study, the article points out the use of the flipped approach as an example of good practice for enhancing academic vocabulary acquisition in EAP context.

ANALISIS USAHA MENTAL (UM) MAHASISWA SEBAGAI GAMBARAN EXTRANOUS COGNITIVE LOAD (ECL) DALAM KEGIATAN PERKULIAHAN PENDIDIKAN BIOLOGI

This study aims to determine the level of Extranous Cognitive Load (ECL) of students through mental effort in learning activities. Mental effort can be known and analyzed from external or foreign aspects, such as learning design and learning strategies undertaken. The source of the burden obtained in the learning process is known as ECL. The effectiveness of ECL is influenced by information and learning activities that contribute to the process of constructing students' cognitive schemes in learning process received. Good learning process happen if the ECL owned by student is in low category. ECL is measured by the mental effort of students in attending lecture activities. This research is a descriptive study, which was carried out on the fourth semester students of biology education who took part in the ethics and professional education classes. ECL measurements were measured using a mental effort questionnaire during the lecture. The data acquired is analyzed on the conversion of values in the low to high categories. The results showed that in the lecturing activities the student’s mental effort average was in the low category at 32.45. A low mental effort represents a low extranous cognitive load (ECL). It can be concluded that the learning strategies carried out in the ethics and education professional lectures can suppress ECL biology education students.

Cognitive influences on perceived phonatory exertion using the Borg CR10

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of the relationship between perceptions of vocal and mental (cognitive) effort during reading and speaking tasks.Methods: One hundred and four young, healthy adult participants were randomized into one of three groups. Each group performed a writing task meant to elicit low mental effort, high mental effort, or high mental effort followed by a period of relaxation. Participants then engaged in reading and speaking tasks, meant to elicit high (suppression of a prepotent desire to speak louder) or low (no suppression of a prepotent desire to speak louder) mental effort, and completed ratings of mental effort and vocal effort via adapted versions of the Borg CR10.Results: Findings indicate that ratings of perceived mental and vocal effort are related to one another, evidenced by strong correlations, and additional analyses reveal that mental effort might drive this relationship.Conclusions: Perceptions of vocal effort appear to mirror ratings of mental effort during tasks for which vocal activity is relatively stable but cognitive demands fluctuate. The possibility that perceptions of mental effort might influence perceptions of vocal effort should be considered when creating reliable and valid measures of vocal effort as well as when interpreting currently adapted measures of vocal effort in the clinical context.

Toward Better Understanding of Task Difficulty during Physicians’ Interaction with Electronic Health Record System (EHRs)

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to assess the relationship of task difficulty and mental effort with performance during physicians’ interaction with electronic health records (EHRs). A total of 38 physicians were asked to identify abnormal results and take follow-up action to “close the loop” on care delivery. Task difficulty was quantified via task-flow strategies and computer mouse-click patterns. Mental effort was quantified using eye movements based on changes in pupillary dilations (task evoked pupillary response or TEPR) and blink rate. Performance was quantified based on commission errors (error vs. no-error). Results indicated that physicians had different task-flow strategies; however, with improved awareness of the patient status, they exhibited an optimal task-flow strategy. Overall, performance was related to task-flow strategies, computer mouse-click patterns, and blink rate, indicating that physicians had lower task-difficulty and experienced lower mental effort with improved awareness of patient follow-up status. This is an important finding demonstrating that task-flows are a dominant predictor of physician performance when comparing between EHR designs. On the contrary, mouse-click patterns and blink rate are both useful predictors of physician performance when assessment was done within an EHR.

Applying of teaching strategy based on cognitive load theory to develop pre-service teacher teaching skills of waves: Cognitive load analysis

This study aimed to reveal Pre-Service Teacher’s cognitive load representing the effectiveness of teaching strategy based on cognitive load theory. Cognitive load is described as correlation among Intrinsic Cognitive Load (ICL) and Extraneous Cognitive Load (ECL). Teaching strategy was developed by Cognitive load Theory with the stages such as Introduction, Reflection, Visualization, Application, Recitation, and Evaluation. Participants in the study were 31 pre-service science teachers in Bogor and Bandung Indonesia. Data of ECL were collected with a complexity task containing a short question to measure the ability of information analysis during lecturer. ECL data were collected with a 7-scale questionnaire contains a statement of the mental effort of pre-service science teachers in lecturer. Result of data analysis found that applied lecture strategy successfully improved pre-service science teachers ICL and reduce ECL. This strategy produced low mental effort especially at introduction stage. The mental effort increases on the application stage.

The role of worked-example in enhancing students’ self-explanation and cognitive efficiency in calculus instruction

This research was aimed to investigate the effect of students’ self-explanation to their achievement, mental effort, and cognitive efficiency while studying mathematics, particularly in integral topics. This research used a static-group comparison design implemented to first-year undergraduate students. The subject of the study consists of 64 first year undergraduate students in one of the universities in Banten province, Indonesia. The students were divided into two classrooms, experimental and control. Experimental classroom received worked-example method whereas control classroom studying without worked-example method. Instruments used in this research include achievement tests, rating scale mental effort, deviation model of cognitive efficiency, and teaching materials in the form of worked-example. The results show that the implementation of self-explanation through worked-example helps students get a higher achievement, lower mental effort, and better cognitive efficiency compared to students who get instruction without worked-example method. The research also reveals the important role of worked-example in enhancing the ability of students’ self-explanation.

Exploring the Role of Infographics for Summarizing Medical Literature

PurposeTo investigate differences in (1) reader preference, (2) cognitive load during summary review, and (3) delayed information retention between infographic article summaries and traditional text-only research abstracts. MethodsThe three study outcomes were assessed using a two-phase within-subjects experiment. In phase 1, participants rated cognitive load as the mental effort they invested in reviewing eight article summaries (four in infographic format and four in text-only abstract format) on the 9-point Paas scale (1=low mental effort, 9=high mental effort) and indicated their preferred summary format on a 9-point preference scale (1=preferred infographics, 9=preferred text-only abstracts). Four weeks later, phase-2 tested delayed information retention via two free-recall and two cued-recall questions per article. ResultsParticipants preferred infographic summaries to traditional text-only research abstract summaries as evidenced by a mean format preference score (mean±standard deviation) of 3.97±2.48 (t(71)=13.6, p=0.01) which was significantly more positive than the neutral score of 5 on the 9 point preference scale. Mean mental effort during summary review was lower for infographics (4.30±1.34) than for text-only abstracts (5.06±1.35, t(70)=4.41, p=0.01). There was no statistically significant difference in delayed information retention. DiscussionThis study suggests that infographics could play a role in summarizing medical research literature. While no difference was found in delayed information retention, infographics were associated with higher reader preference and lower cognitive load during summary review. Further research should clarify the practical implications of these findings.