Week 4 & 5 Research Activity - Cognitive Overload

Cognitive overload is a term used to express that state that people experience as a result of distraction, stressful situations, multitasking, and data congestion related to increasingly sophisticated technologies (Leon, Lewis Jr. 2009). The exercises suggested in Activity 2 of Biweekly Research depict a perfect picture of cognitive overload.  

Driving is a high-attention-demanded task and requires full attention to ensure safely control the vehicle and respond to events happening on the roads, especially during high speed and traffic. My personal experience, any incident or element taking place not within my intention can be a terrifying factor and affect my driving since my mind flies away frequently while I am on the road. It happens quite frequently that I don’t follow what the news is saying or what music is playing on the radio with my off mind. My father used to tell me that full attention is needed when you are behind the wheel not just for your own driving but also for others’, especially for those drivers who are easily distracted or irresponsible around you.  To exercise my father’s advice and avoid any potential accidents, I don’t multitask during driving which I am not good at in order to get focused on driving. The gadget I have mainly used in my car is the radio with preset channels or preloaded CDs.  

There are three main types of distraction cause cognitive overload during driving including: visual – taking your eyes off the road, manual – taking your eyes off the road and cognitive – taking your mind off what you are doing.   For possible distracting activities including: using a cell phone, eating and drinking, talking to passengers, grooming, reading or writing, using a navigation system, watching a video and changing the radio station, CD or multimedia player, the more you get engaged with those activities during driving, the more likely you get involved into car accidents. No matter how good you are at multitasking, you best keep your eyes on the roads, your hands on the wheel and your mind on your driving to ensure your safety. 

The experiment I practiced as Activity II guided, I hardly got concentrated and retained my memory of multiplication tables through 12 under the circumstance with radio and TV on in high volume, laptop was working and smartphone notification interfered from time to time. Multiplication tables are stored as long-term memory and suppose to be recalled easily within seconds for me. The noisy radio and TV definitely get me disturbed and deteriorate my performance, the laptop is considered as visual distraction even I don’t really put my finger tips on the keyboard. On the top of it, the email receiving notification beeped from my smartphone also causes my cognition distraction abruptly.  With an influx of information processing simultaneously, my brain is apparently overloaded and wouldn’t function effectively. 

The consequences of information overload are also applied to classroom learning. When instructors give too much information or request too many tasks to learners at the same time, will result in students being unable to process the information and perform as teachers expect. While learners are bombarded with overflowed information if the instructional materials are involved with too much complexity and not managed properly, it will lead to a cognitive overload, impaired learners’ acquisition, and a lower performance on tasks.