Implications of Cognitive Load
Theory to the assessment
of English language
comprehension
Slava Kalyuga
School of Education
University of New South Wales
Working Memory
Constructing mental
representations of a
situation or task
Long-Term
Memory
Knowledge base

Sensory Memory:
Incoming information

Cognitive studies of
expertise:
knowledge base in LTM is
central to cognitive
processing
Knowledge base in Long-Term
Memory affects the way we
process information in Working
Memory:
WM is very limited when dealing with
novel information
WM has no known limits when dealing
with information that has been
organized and stored in LTM
Schemas:
Reading a text: schemas for letters, words,
phrases, sentence structures, genres
Textbase: a mental representation of propositions
Situation model: textbase integrated with
knowledge base
Long-term working memory (LT-WM):
sufficiently durable and interference proof
(Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995)
Reading comprehension
(linguistic schemas)
This was the course that the
student, whom the school that
was criticized by the newspaper
expelled, failed.
This was the course
that the student
whom the
school
that was criticized
by the newspaper
expelled
failed
The theory:
If knowledge structures in LTM
alter the characteristics of WM
effectively transforming it into LTWM, then tests of its content
would provide a measure of levels
of expertise.
Rapid verification technique
Presenting learners with a series of
possible solution steps (statements)
for a limited time and asking them to
rapidly verify the suggested steps
(statements)
Reading comprehension
The artist, who performed for the
crowd that gathered to enjoy the
show, left.
1 local thematic violation
3 sentence nodes to parse at one time
Working memory capacity allows
no more than 4 local violations
(Gibson, 1998) or 2 sentence
nodes or clauses to be attended
at one time (Kimball, 1973).
Cognitive difficulty
D = max {local thematic violations;
sentence nodes or clauses to parse
simultaneously}
On each of the following pages, you
will see a sentence. You will be
allowed a limited time to read it.
Following each sentence, several
related brief statements will be
presented. For each statement, you
have to press immediately a green
key (on your right) if the statement is
correct or a red key (on your left) if
the statement is incorrect.
The artist, who performed for the
crowd that gathered to enjoy the
show, left.

The artist left.

The artist enjoyed the show.

The crowd gathered for the show.

The crowd left.
This was the course that the
student, whom the school that
was criticized by the
newspaper expelled, failed.
D = max {7; 4}
seven local thematic violations: the course, that, the
student, whom, the school, that, and the
newspaper
four sentence nodes to parse at one time: the
course was, the student failed, the school
expelled, and the newspaper criticized.

The school was criticized by the student.

The school expelled the student.


The course was criticized by the
newspaper.
The newspaper criticized the school.
Validation study
rapid test: 18 sentences/72 responses
traditional test: 8 passages, 42 multiple
choice questions
Y 7, N= 19:
test time reduced by a factor of 3.7
correlation with a traditional test .63
reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) .71