cognitive loadn
the idea that the more a person has to learn or process in a short amount
of time, the more difficult it is to process that information in working
memory. For example, the cognitive load of studying a subject in a second
language is much higher than studying the same subject in one’s native
language, because the brain must work to decode the language while simul-
taneously trying to understand the new information. In L2 reading, the
cognitive load of a text is one factor that influences the difficulty of a text
for the reader.
cognitive meaningn
another term for denotation
cognitive overloadn
also information overload
in language teaching, a situation when a learner has too much information
to process in real time or in order to make a decision. For example if the
language processing demands of an activity go beyond the processing
limits of the learner, it may result in anxiety and stress as well as inability
to carry out the activity.
cognitive processn
also cognitive strategies
any mental process which learners make use of in language learning, such
as inferencing, generalization, deductive learning, monitoring,
and memorizing.
cognitive psychologyn
a branch of psychology that deals with such processes as attention,
perception, comprehension, memory, and learning. In contrast
with behaviourism, cognitive psychology is concerned with mental pro-
cesses and the representation of knowledge in the mind. Many cognitive
psychologists work within an information processingparadigm, which
assumes that the mind is a symbol-processing system and that these
symbols are transformed into other symbols when acted on by different
processes, while others have adopted models proposed by connectionism.
cognitive sciencen
a discipline which draws on research inlinguistics, mathematics,
neuroscience, philosophy, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology,
artificial intelligence and other fields. Cognitive science deals with the
scientific study of thinking, reasoning and the intellectual processes of the
cognitive load