BACKGROUND

Throughout this disclosure, the expressions Cognitive Load, Cognitive Load Reduction, and Cognitive Load Theory will be capitalized, as they are terms of art. Cognitive psychology refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. Cognitive Load Theory is a concept that the instructional design by an instructor, teacher, professor or the like can be configured in order to reduce the cognitive load in learners. The concept is based upon the desire to ease the mental effort needed process information including, cognitive tasks, learnings, processing, etc. In theory, a heavy cognitive load will have a negative effect on the completion of other metal task, thus making it harder for that individual to process information.

Research has shown that elderly, school aged students, and children experience cognitive load differently and typically at higher levels. Proper Cognitive Load should assist in the presentation of information in a manner that encourages the viewer or learner of that information to optimize their intellectual performance.

According to Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), human working memory is limited in both its capacity to store information and the duration with which it can be stored. Within working memory, sensory processing, i.e. visual, auditory and tactile information is processed before being passed on to long-term memory in the form of categorical information (such as schemas) for encoding and storage. Cognitive Load Theory holds that as immediate sensory inputs aggregate, they tend to fill up the available processing space within working memory, resulting in a decrease in efficiency within the entire memory system. Conventional research offers that these elements of load can have severe implications with reference to an individual's learning ability, memory retention and general problem solving ability. In CLT, one would expect a peripheral task-irrelevant stimulus to impose an extraneous cognitive load and reduce task performance, under the assumption that the cognitive task is complex.

One area of conventional theory is directed at far field peripheral processing and its effects on the load theory of selective attention and cognitive control. This theory is an extension of perceptual load theory and deals primarily with the visual cognitive load induced by the attentional perceptual processing of visual information. One of the central issues addressed by this research is the problem of distractors within the peripheral field of view, and the effect of perceptual cognitive load on a person's ability to consciously process the presence of a distractor.

A distractor can be classified as any type of movement within the field of view of the eye. It is believed that sensory responses to distractors within the field of view are only noticed when load of the main perceptual task is low, and when the processing of the distractors is relevant for the stimuli to be processed in the main perceptual task. According to the researchers, responses to these distractors are reduced the more the processing load of the main perceptual task increases. These findings appear to be supported by FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) studies that show motion-related activity is reduced in the cortical V5 region of the brain during high cognitive load tasks.

Another issue concerns the lack of experimentation in the far peripheral field. The common method used in most of the experiments supporting perceptual load theory is to use either a field of dots moving from the center of the field of view (foveal) towards the edge of a computer screen or a distractor just outside of the central field of the eye in the parafoveal or near peripheral field.

Conventional research shows that because the biological functions of foveal (central) and peripheral vision are so different, the processing of the information collected by these areas actually takes place within separate regions of the brain, making far peripheral processing an idiosyncratic process. This could mean that far peripheral field processing is not bound by selective attention in the same way foveal and parafoveal vision seems to be. Under perceptual load theory, one would expect the peripheral stimulus to have no effect if the cognitive task is complex. This leaves open the question regarding whether movement within the far peripheral field (50-90 degrees) will produce measurable cognitive load outside of human selective attention.

Typically, each eye can see in a range of approximately 120 degrees of an arc in a horizontal field. Most of that arc is defined as peripheral vision and the human brain and eye in conjunction do not always process information in the peripheral vision areas in the same manner as information received in the center of vision for that individual. The center vision, which can also be classified as the center of gaze, typically coordinates with the center of the person's face and has a range of about 20 degrees either side of the center of the vision.

In light of the above, what is needed is a new system, apparatus, and method of manipulating (either up or down) the cognitive load on an individual using movement somewhere from the center to the far periphery of vision to effect information processing, task processing, and mental performance of that individual as desired to meet a particular task demand. This needed system, apparatus, and method is lacking in the art.

SUMMARY OF THE EMBODIMENTS

The embodiments herein generally relate to altering the cognitive load in an individual to affect the information and task processing of that individual. This is achieved by introducing movement in different parts of the visual field to affect the cognitive load thereby allowing the user to be more or less efficient at the task or information processing.

Embodiments of headwear for reduce the cognitive load in a user. The headwear embodiments compromise a frame shaped to be positioned on the head of the user, and first and second display screens attached to the frame. A processor is operatively attached to the frame, the first display screen, and the second display screen. The processor is configured to instruct the first display screen and the second display screen to display repetitive, non-biological movement.

