An Investigation of the Relationship between Subjective and Objective Cognitive Load Measures of Language Item Difficulty

The current study strived to delve into the response behavior and perceptions of examinees while taking a test in light of cognitive load theory. The empirical data were collected from 60 MA English major graduates and students, with a high level of language proficiency. The participants were required to answer 60 multiple-choice language items (i.e., grammar and vocabulary questions), taken from the high-stakes tests of the MA English majors of the Iranian university entrance examination (IUEE), as fast and as accurately as possible. After completing each test item, they rated their perceptions with regard to the difficulty of test items (Bratfisch et al., 1972) and the amount of mental effort (Paas, 1992). Their response time spent on each language item and their selected options were also stored by the Psychopy software (Peirce et al., 2019). Through running Pearson and Spearman rho correlations, the findings revealed that response time enjoyed a strong positive correlation with mental effort, meaning that both objective and subjective cognitive load measures matched in terms of sensitivity to cognitive load changes in language test items. Further, the subjective measures of perceived mental effort and perceived level of difficulty revealed to be the sound indicators of cognitive load changes. As predicted, response time also indicated that more difficult language test items imposed a greater amount of load. The implications of the study will be explained.