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I am a theater geek. I love musicals. And road trips are made for listening to soundtrack after soundtrack and belting out tunes.
Last week, my dogs and I decided to check out Savannah (OK, I decided to check out Savannah, and they came along for the trip). With 9 hours in the car each way (thanks traffic!) I had a lot of time to think, listen, and sing.
For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how to expand John Sweller’s instructional design Cognitive Load Theory to apply it in a more global manner (beyond instructional design/education). Many hours of driving later, I think I’ve come across an easy multi-media way to explain it.
Under Sweller’s Cogntive Load Theory, if material is presented in such a way that the lesson’s load is too high or too low, the educational objectives will not be met: too low, and the information isn’t engaging enough; too high, and processing stops. Cognitive load of the material is based on intrinsic load (how complicated is the material), extrinsic load (how much mental power is needed because of how the material is presented), and germane load (how much effort is the individual putting into learning the material). [There’s also a whole part to the theory about Working Memory, and how, when demand on working memory exceeds capacity of working memory, processing slows or stops, resulting in cognitive overload. But I will save that for another post.]
What does any of this have to do with musicals?
The musical Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is the hottest ticket, by far, in New York City right now. For one show in June, tickets were going for thousands of dollars each. When tickets go on sale, Ticketmaster’s website cannot keep up and they are all gone almost immediately. Why? It is a musical about a Founding Father. It is based on an 800+ page book by Ron Chernow, which never received nearly the amount of acclaim that Miranda’s musical version has.
From a cognitive load theory standpoint, the musical is far more likely to educate than the book is.
Leaving aside the artistic license taken by Miranda, viewers of the musical are much more likely to retain a greater portion of the material than readers of the book. Why is this? It is the same story (though the book is significantly more detailed); the intrinsic load of the material in both forms of presentation are approximately the same. We will pretend here that people who see the musical or read the book are equally interested in learning the material (though this is very likely a faulty assumption; there are many other reasons to go see a popular musical, and very few other reasons to invest the time into an 800 page book), making the germane load approximately equal.* The main difference, then, is the extrinsic load.
The musical is a modern translation of Hamilton’s life. Rather than concerning himself with replicating Hamilton’s tone or the culture of the day, Miranda uses hip hop, rap, and slang to tell the story. Conversely, Chernow uses direct quotes from the individuals involved and complex sentence structure and vocabulary throughout, generally targeting a much narrower audience. Anyone can watch Miranda’s telling and learn something; Chernow, with 800+ pages of text and footnotes, and 36 hours for the Audible version, requires far more focus to understand, learn, and retain the information.
The musical combines the first two chapters – 34 pages, or an hour and forty-five minutes in the Audible version – into a 4 minute song, performed this year at the Grammy’s:
It’s pretty easy to understand why 4 minutes would be easier to remember than almost two hours. But is it just the bevity? Is it just the addition of music?
No. It’s also the choice of language.
Unless you are reading Shakespeare (and I was going to use an example here from the Shakespeare spoof Something Rotten, also now on Broadway, but it seemed to get too convoluted), the exact words chosen to express a sentiment can either provide confusion or clarity. Using a $10 word when a 2¢ word will do unnecessarily increases the extrinsic load of the information. Using extra multi-media effects – such as fade-ins and outs in a PowerPoint presentation – that do not add to the story has the same effect.
At all times, it is essential to remember the goal of presenting information: if it is to inform, it is vital to properly balance intrinsic and extrinsic load (and, as much as possible, germane load). This is the case whether the goal is to educate or to provide soldiers with vital intelligence information. Poor information design contributing to cognitive overload is just as bad as, or worse than, too little information. And has long-term effects on each individual’s cognitive health.
* Someone with very low germane load – no interest in learning the material – will not learn it, even in the musical form, because they are, essentially, choosing not to. Nothing in the design or presentation of material can overcome the barriers an individual can put up to decide not to learn.
Every October, the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) holds a conference. It is quite the event. Especially if you like looking at the Big Toys being sold to the Army. The Washington DC Convention Center is filled to the brim with tanks and helicopters and everything else you can think of.
Besides the various materiel, and social events, and athletic events (Army 10 Miler anyone?), there are also Professional Development Opportunities, full of panels on different Army-centric topics, and always with an impressive lineup of speakers. This past year, for the first time, I attended one of the Family Forums.
The panel included Secretary McHugh, just a few weeks before his retirement, GEN Milley, and SMA Dailey. The focus of the panel was Taking Care of Soldiers and Their Families. If you take care of your people, they’ll take care of the mission.
Very few 17-24 year old Americans are eligible to join the military, even using fairly low standards. Obesity and academic performance (graduating from high school and obtaining a minimum score on the ASVAB) are two of the key reasons.
But even once they’re in the Army, many young people do not succeed in boot camp and in their initial years in the Army. I’ve heard that 1/3 of recruits do not complete their initial term. That’s a huge number.
SMA Dailey opined that part of the reason for so many issues in boot camp is that recruits enter the Army having never failed at anything before. Their parents, school systems, even athletic organizations (participation trophies anyone?) protected them so much that many fail for the first time in boot camp. Here’s the thing: boot camp is designed so that everyone will fail. How can they build you up if you they don’t break you down first? (Also, there’s that thing about the enemy not caring if they hurt your feelings.)
So everyone fails at boot camp. Hopefully, everyone also recovers from that failure. That’s what resilience is all about. But many recruits, having had no experience in recovering, don’t know how.
Since October, I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience. Has our society become less resilient? Is the amount of PTSD more “proof” that soldiers today are weaker than soldiers of WWII? Or has it just become more acceptable to admit your weaknesses? Or, maybe, it’s both.
My contention is that there are two forms of non-resilience:
A baby is born and, assuming all else is equal, will hit certain milestones within standard windows. A baby who tries to stand and falls down will, generally, try again. Some will take longer. Some will get frustrated. But they will (again, with all standard caveats), eventually, walk. But as children age, far too often, parents step in and help the child. So the child stops learning how to pick himself up and try again. This is learned non-resilience.
On the other hand, some children – some people – are just softer. They do not have the emotional reserves to try again. This could be because they never had them. This could be because they’ve already reached their emotional limits and have nothing else to give (either until they heal, or ever, depending on the depth of their scars). This is natural non-resilience.
It is pretty important for the Army to distinguish between these groups. But simply conducting resilience tests may not provide the necessary data. As I said: these distinctions are MY idea, and they are totally untested, and I’m unqualified, in a have-the-professional-background-to-prove-it kind of way, to know whether both groups would test the same way.
But I do know this: WMC (see last week’s post) has been correlated with resilience. Because it is not a direct test of resilience, I believe that it will show the individual’s ability to learn to be resilient.
If we know that the person can be resilient, boot camp becomes the perfect place to teach them. Preferably without breaking them.
Tonight is the Superbowl. I assume most people watch it because they want to see the commercials, or because they actually care about who wins. That’s not me. (Partly because I don’t actually watch it.) (Don’t get me wrong – I’m a New Orleans Girl at heart, and want to see Peyton win, but really, if the Saints aren’t playing, I don’t care.) I do think a lot about professional athletics, especially football, but not in the typical “care about sports way”.
OK, after last week’s post, you may be thinking that I focus on the head injuries and future cases of CTE. That’s reasonable, since I am working with a doctor who has healed brain injuries. But that’s not it either.
I think about the difference between #1 and #2. In professional sports, there is very little difference. Every one one field, whatever the sport, is one of the elite in the field. Why does one team win? Why does the other team lose? (Other than that, eventually, one will win and one will lose.) Everyone has good days, everyone has bad days. That’s part of it. The ability to work as a team is another part of it (training, interpersonal issues, etc).
But I think a big part of it is cognitive – and this is never really tested in professional sports. (Yes,th the combines use the Wonderlic. But teams, from what I understand, pretty much ignore the scores. They have not been predictive of a player’s performance.) What kind of cognitive skills does a professional athlete need? He (or she) needs the ability to read the field – the opposing team, their own teammates – and react. Quickly.
What cognitive function does this? Well, possibly several. But one of them is Working Memory Capacity (WMC).
WMC is a cognitive processing capacity system responsible for maintaining focus (attention control) on a given set of items (short-term memory), retrieving relevant information (long-term memory) related to those items, and manipulating the relevant information to apply to those items. It is correlated with intelligence, language comprehension, multitasking, attention control, situational awareness, problem-solving, impulse control and decision-making.
WMC very well may make the difference between #1 and #2 on the sports field.
It also may make an even bigger difference on the battlefield. Where all “players” are not elite, where US troops already have the advantage of training and materiel, using WMC as a characteristic will likely provide those troops an increased advantage over the opposing forces, who have the advantages of knowledge of the terrain and going home to their families each night.
More on WMC in the coming weeks.
The first time I heard the phrase “cognitive overburden” was in 2011 or so, when Dr. Marilyn Freeman, then-DASA(R&T), introduced the 21 top Army S&T challenges. Because I was focused (perhaps hyper-focused) on my training system at the time, though I had never heard the phrase before, I instantly just “knew” that the answer to cognitive overburden was to train.
On and off for a few years, I would throw the phrase into my pitches, but it never really went anywhere. And I continued to know it was the answer without knowing (or, really, caring) why.
And then, one day, a well-meaning low level bureaucrat, upon listening to my pitch, looked at me and told me, with complete sincerity, that “the Army isn’t really interested in reducing cognitive load. We want to increase capacity. Do you have a way to make soldiers smarter?” I was a bit dumbfounded, but started researching and reading that day.
There really isn’t a lot written about cognitive load, certainly not using those terms. Mostly because it’s not something many people concern themselves with. Cognitive Load Theory is an educational design theory based on balancing intrinsic load (how difficult the material is) with extrinsic load (how the material is presented/designed) and germane load (effort expended by the student to understand). As a theory, it is boring and dry to read about, and complicated to implement.
There’s a lot of focus these days on UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) design, but these are both about maximizing enjoyment and increasing customer loyalty. Neither, even when used by educational companies, considers best education methods and balancing load.
Now, obviously, the Army does a lot of training, so cognitive load theory applies there. But does it apply anywhere else?
My contention is that it absolutely does. At the core of cognitive load theory is the understanding that learning is compromised when the sum of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane loads exceeds available working memory capacity. But it isn’t just learning that is compromised when working memory capacity (which I will address in detail at a later date) is exceeded; it’s all cognitive function. Everything a good soldier – a thinking soldier – does relies on cognitive function.
Given the amount of materiel all soldiers rely on to do their jobs, they are all, essentially, all systems-of-systems. And all of them can be overloaded, physically and mentally. Until all materiel solutions are designed with Cognitive Load Theory in mind, and an understanding that reducing extrinsic load of each one individually and of them all as a whole, soldiers will be in danger of shutting down mentally on the battlefield.
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