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Using Electroencephalography to Measure Cognitive Load

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Abstract

Application of physiological methods, in particular electroencephalography (EEG), offers new and promising approaches to educational psychology research. EEG is identified as a physiological index that can serve as an online, continuous measure of cognitive load detecting subtle fluctuations in instantaneous load, which can help explain effects of instructional interventions when measures of overall cognitive load fail to reflect such differences in cognitive processing. This paper presents a review of seminal literature on the use of continuous EEG to measure cognitive load and describes two case studies on learning from hypertext and multimedia that employed EEG methodology to collect and analyze cognitive load data.

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Acknowledgement

During the realization of this work Tamara van Gog was supported by a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO; grant nr. 451-08-003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Educational Studies, Oklahoma State University, 210 Willard Hall, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

    Pavlo Antonenko

  2. Department of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Fred Paas & Tamara van Gog

  3. Center for Learning Sciences and Technologies, Open University of The Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Fred Paas

  4. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Roland Grabner

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  1. Pavlo Antonenko
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  2. Fred Paas
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  3. Roland Grabner
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  4. Tamara van Gog
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Correspondence to Pavlo Antonenko.

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Antonenko, P., Paas, F., Grabner, R. et al. Using Electroencephalography to Measure Cognitive Load. Educ Psychol Rev 22, 425–438 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-010-9130-y

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