Analysis of cognitive dissonance and overload through ability-demand gap models

Abstract

Maintaining alternative decisions in working memory (WM) can lead to accumulating high cognitive load. Some aspects of cognitive load improve attentiveness, but adding a cognitively inconsistent (conflict) situation results in a failure in cognitive task performance. This research introduces the notion of the human ability-demand gap (discrepancy between human cognitive ability and task performance) and its association with task-evoked cognitive overload and cognitive dissonance (inconsistency). By using the ability-demand gap as a 3-D response model, cognitive dissonance and overload was proposed to understand the confluence among working memory capacity, users' cognitive load, and task performance. The maximum gap was computed using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) statistics. The empirical studies show that the maximum ability-demand gap can be considered as the threshold between cognitive dissonance and overload. It was also observed that there was a cyclical and nonlinear relationship between working memory capacity, cognitive dissonance/lock-up, and cognitive overload.

Publication Title

IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems

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