Cognitive overload, an English radio panel game and brain frying.
Cognitive Overload stops learning happening. We need to reduce it as much as we can.
Last Saturday’s Guardian newspaper (27th July 2024) reported about an academic paper that suggested that a radio panel show creates ‘the ideal conditions for cognitive overload’.
On the show - it’s called Just A Minute - each panelist is given a random subject to talk about for precisely one minute. It might be ‘Kings I have known’ or ‘My favourite shoe’. As far as I know, the panelists do not know what subject they have to talk about until it is given to them. When they begin, the aim is to get to the end of their minute without repeating anything, without hesitating and without veering off the subject. Or, as the programme puts it, without repetition, deviation or hesitation.
The academic paper says that the game ‘creates the perfect storm of cognitive pressure’. Almost simultaneously, each panelist has to think of what they know of the random subject, what they can make up about the subject, how they can make it into a story arc that will last a minute, what they have already said, how to avoid going off the subject and how to fill in what feels like an inevitable pause that is coming up. They have to do this in front of a live audience whilst being timed. Over the years, hundreds of celebrities - often comedians who should be better at this than most of us - have tried to play the game. Very few become even reasonably proficient at it. When someone does get to the end of their minute having fulfilled all the conditions, it is such a rare occasion that the audience erupts into cheers and applause.
Cognitive Overload happens when the energy we ask the brain to use up is greater than the energy available to it. We all experience cognitive overload at different times. Whenever we say to someone ‘Just slow down a little, please, I can’t keep up’, we are experiencing a form of cognitive overload. When we are in the coffee shop just nattering away it might not matter so much. If we are on an airplane and the safety demonstration is too complex, too fast or both, it might matter a great deal.
If good repeated experiences enable the brain to get better by making sticky that which we end up learning, then cognitive overload does the opposite. To quote from the paper, cognitive overload ‘creates a high risk of brain fry’. Cognitive overload cuts off the brain’s ability to learn by creating an energy deficit. Repeated experiences of the resulting brain fry, of course, can then cause a lack of confidence in the learners or the performers. The bad repeated experiences of brain fry caused by cognitive overload come together to create an impossible environment for learning.
We’ll be looking more at cognitive overload when we return to our normal Looking for Learning story later in August. But we need to acknowledge this. Both good repeated experiences and not-good cognitive overload are super-powerful in enabling learning to happen or not. If good repeated experiences enable learning to happen, then cognitive overload shuts off the possibility of learning.
In my early days as a teacher, I suspect I may have been very good at creating cognitive overload without realising what I was doing. Since then, I have seen cognitive overload happen hundreds of times in classrooms and organisations.
Thinking about this over the past weekend, something occurred to me that didn’t occur to me when I worked with the best teacher I have ever seen in action. One of the key things Kay Mussard (sorry for the potential embarrassment, Kay, if you ever read this) was able to do day after day, lesson after lesson, was to reduce the cognitive overload on the children and students she taught. Her lesson routines were crisp and clear. There was always something on the whiteboard for each of her students to get on with as soon as they came into the classroom, mostly consolidating or developing learning which, in itself, meant that her class was already somewhat familiar with the learning they had been set. The welcome she gave to her students as they came into the room was always positive and professional. She really did like all her students and they knew it. Favouritism was non-existent in Kay’s classes. Her instructions to her students were crystal clear and well-paced. Her feedback to them was always related to what they were being asked to learn. And so on. It was a masterclass, almost every hour of every day.
Everyone wanted their child to be in Kay’s class. Everyone knew that she was a great teacher. What made her so great - and what her students learned more than any other class in the school - was her ability to get cognitive overload down to the lowest levels. In doing so, she gave her students’ brains maximum energy to learn.
Cognitive overload isn’t just about children and students, of course. I have seen teachers who wanted to do the best they could but were for ever interrupted by the cognitive overload imposed by ill-thought through school systems that took up brain energy but had no real benefit to anyone.
In a similar vein, I have seen school leaders hampered by cognitive overload not of their making (yes, I’m looking at you, those school inspectors who can’t do your important work without making things worse and creating brain fry in already tense situations); I have seen children and students hampered by the cognitive overload created by their parents and carers even before they have left home.
You might remember that the Hedgehog Concept in an organisation is a very simple concept… that is used… as a frame of reference for all their decisions. If you weren’t with us early on, please look for the 29th January 2024 post, Learning and The Hedgehog-1 to find out more.
One of the big advantages of a Hedgehog Concept used well is that it helps to diminish cognitive overload by ensuring that everyone - children, parents, colleagues, organisational leaders and others - has the same focus, that everyone knows what really matters and that everyone appreciates that the majority of discussions and decision making will be focused on the Hedgehog Concept. There are reasons why organisations with their own deeply embedded Hedgehog Concept do better than others. The reduction of cognitive overload is one of the most important of those reasons.
Some time ago, at an interview for the Headship of a school, I was asked what I thought my most important contribution to the school would be if I were to be appointed. I won’t tell you what I said in reply, even though they gave me the job. I do know that if I were to be asked that question next week, I would simply say ‘Reduce everyone’s cognitive overload so that we all have maximum brain energy to get better at stuff that matters’.
If you are a government minister on vacation, you might reflect on how you can reduce cognitive overload for schools, school leaders, teachers, students and parents.
If you are a school or organisational leader, you might reflect about what is happening in the way your school or organisation operates that creates or increases cognitive overload and what you might do about it.
If you are a teacher, you might reflect the same about the classes you teach. We can’t grumble about the negative impact that leadership is having on our work if we do the same for our children and students.
If you are a parent, you might reflect on whether you send your children off to school with as little cognitive overload as possible and, if you don’t, what you might do about it.
This Substack has a Hedgehog Concept. It’s all about learning which, as we know, takes place in the brains of our children and students. The least we can do to get brains ready for that learning to happen is to make sure that as much of the energy those different brains have available to them is able to be focused on what matters. ‘Frying tonight’ might be one of the famous signs in Britain’s fish and chip shops. ‘Not much brain frying in here’ should be one of the signs in schools, classrooms and organisations everywhere.
As I write this, Brighton is getting hot for the first time this year. By Wednesday, it will be 26 degrees. (That will create cognitive overload for me on its own as it reduces the amount of brain energy I have available.) Whatever weather you are having, I hope it is helping you rest and reflect, at least for a while. See you next week.
Martin