Strategies used by humans to reduce their own cognitive load

A strategy (or modus operandi) is a way to perform a task. Some strategies can be planned and implemented consciously, supported by controlled knowledge. Other strategies are implemented unconsciously, supported by automatic knowledge. In order to accomplish the same task, different strategies can be implemented and they may implicate different types of cognitive load. Experiments on problem solving within an instructional design context have led to a better understanding of strategies. Some of these studies illustrate that either extraneous or intrinsic cognitive load can be reduced by participants’ strategies. The aim of this paper is to review some empirical results which show that strategies are used by people to manage their own cognitive load, that is to reduce it - consciously or not - when it is too high. These strategies can be interpreted as a way to reduce the amount of information that needs to be processed. The fact that these strategies can be implemented both by experts and novices, by adults and young children, is compatible with the hypothesis that cognitive load reducing strategies proceed from biologically primary knowledge (Geary, 2007).