Cognitive load theory is an instructional design theory based on our knowledge of human cognitive architecture and evolutionary educational psychology. The theory assumes that curriculum areas covered in educational institutions are concerned with domain-specific, biologically secondary information that we have not specifically evolved to acquire rather than generic-cognitive, biologically primary skills that we have specifically evolved to acquire. There is a cognitive architecture associated with the acquisition, processing and use of domain-specific, biologically secondary information. That cognitive architecture can be specified by a series of principles. Those principles also apply to the information processing characteristics of evolution by natural selection and constitute a natural information processing system. The principles provide the core of cognitive load theory and have been used to generate instructional guidelines that facilitate knowledge acquisition. Using those guidelines, implications for practitioners are derived that indicate effective instructional procedures. Most of those procedures are concerned with reducing unnecessary cognitive load.

认知负荷理论是一种基于我们对人类认知架构和进化教育心理学知识的教学设计理论。该理论假设教育机构所涵盖的课程领域涉及我们尚未专门进化获得的特定领域的生物学次要信息，而不是我们专门进化获得的通用认知、生物学主要技能。有一个与特定领域的生物学二级信息的获取、处理和使用相关的认知架构。该认知架构可以由一系列原则指定。这些原则也适用于自然选择进化的信息处理特性，构成自然信息处理系统。这些原则提供了认知负荷理论的核心，并已被用于生成促进知识获取的教学指南。使用这些指南，可以得出对从业者的影响，表明有效的教学程序。这些程序中的大多数都与减少不必要的认知负荷有关。