The document discusses a study that examined how affordance-based interactions can affect the cognitive load of children's working memory. Researchers conducted an experiment with 11 children aged 7-12 who completed a mental education brain game task after being distracted by a short video clip. Results showed that as the game rounds increased, children's familiarity with the interface enhanced and the number of trials decreased, but completion time and cognitive load increased due to higher difficulty levels. The study concluded that affordance-based interactions do require cognitive resources and children's efficiency in the game depended directly on their cognitive load.

1. Children Cognitive Load Analysis in Affordance-
based Interaction
Syed Asim Ali
Department of Computer Science / UBIT, University of Karachi, Karachi -74400, Pakistan
Email: asim@uok.edu.pk
Areeba Hafeez
Institute of Business Administration, Computer Science, Karachi-74400, Pakistan
Email: sareeba22@yahoo.com
Shereen Akram
Institute of Business Administration, Computer Science, Karachi -74400, Pakistan
Email: shereenakram@live.com
Muhammad Affan Khan
Institute of Business Administration, Computer Science, Karachi -74400, Pakistan
Email: muhammadaffan.khan@khi.iba.edu.pk
Afshan Ejaz
Institute of Business Administration, Computer Science, Karachi -74400, Pakistan
Email: aejaz@iba.edu.pk
Abstract — In human-computer interaction, there are
a number of design factors that designers keep in mind
while designing the user interfaces to make user
experiences easy and less painful. Affordance is one
of that and it plays a critical role in this experience.
These are the self-explanatory signs that offer the user
how an object or a system can be utilized without
making any efforts. In this research paper, we focused
and experimentally examined how affordance-based
interactions can affect the cognitive load of children's
memory. We provided the children whose ages were
between 7 to 12 years with the simple task to identify
the positions of different objects using a mental
education brain game after distracting them with a
short movie clip and observed the findings which we
will discuss in detail later.
Index Terms—Cognitive Load, Affordance, Working
Memory, Human-Computer, Interactions
I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
Affordance helps us perform interface based
interactions more intuitively without making any effort.
Psychologist J. J. Gibson (1979) proposed the concept
of affordance as the available actions an object provides.
He used the chair as an example to elaborate this idea
that a user can afford sitting on a chair by just looking at
the flat horizontal surface. According to him, the
properties of a chair afford sitting on it. Later, Norman
further explained that affordances are the result of our
mental perception, how we see things. He further
divides the term into two types. Real and perceived
affordances. Real affordances can be matched with
Gibson’s idea whereas the perceived affordances are the
one that a person can perceive based on his previous
experience. (Norman, 1999; Still & Dark, 2008)
In order to get an understanding of these types,
consider an example of a button named “submit” with
no markup at all. It would be harder to say that it is a
button. But if the same button appears at the end of a
web form, we still need a little bit of processing to
properly perceive it as a button. But it will be easier to
International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 17, No. 5, May 2019
130 https://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/
ISSN 1947-5500

2. do so if the button has the markup (styling) of a button
that we use in the web designing today. This means
that affordances do require minimal cognitive
processing (Still & Dark, 2013).
On the other hand, designers try to introduce
affordances in their designs whenever possible,
without thinking what kind of effect it will bring to the
Working Memory (WM) to the user. WM plays a vital
role in understanding UI based interactions. Baddeley
(2003) defines the WM as a limited storage provided
to store information for a short period of time. It is
further divided into two parts namely verbal and
spatial. The verbal working memory (VWM) is
responsible for storing verbal information and spatial
working memory is responsible for processing
information about the visual appearances of an object.
The other main part of the WM is the central executive
which controls both VWM and SWM and make use of
them at the same time.
II. RELATED WORK
It is true that the topic itself is debatable. There are a
number of studies that support both the arguments.
Convention based interactions which were discussed in
Gibsonian framework were found affected by working
memory load whereas the affordance-based were not.
Therefore, designers should rethink about the fact that
whether to use affordance-based interaction is helpful
or not. It is observed that violation of the conventions
(perceived affordances) can cost more WM load on a
user because of the unexpected outcome. (Still & Dark,
2010)
It is important to understand that how affordance-based
interactions can affect the WM of a person. Generally,
designers think that adding affordance based
interactions would be helpful as they do not require any
sort of cognitive processing (Maier & Fadel, 2009).
However, if the user is given a simple UI based task
and his performance under a WM load suffers, we can
say that this is not a resource free task and some
cognitive resources do required to process the task.
Also, the results of the study show that affordance-
based interactions should not be considered as a
resource free task. It would be better if the designers
consider the WM resources of a user before introducing
affordance based interactions. (JOSEPH E. GRGIC,
MARY L. STILL and JEREMIAH D. STILL, “Effects
of Cognitive Load on Affordance-based Interactions”,
2016)
III. METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study is to determine the impact
of affordance based interactions on children working
memory. It is an empirical study in which quantitative
data is collected through experiment. The targeted
audience are children aged between 8 to 11 years. A total
of 11 children were participate in this experiment.
The experiment has comprised of four trials and a
distractor that shows after each trial. It was performed on
android mobile. Mental education brain game application
is used to perform these tasks. DU Recorder is used for
recording the timings. An animated video is used as a
distractor that shows after each trail.
All the instructions were given to each participant
about the complete task. For each task different objects
in pairs shows at random location for 500 milliseconds.
Participants were asked to recall the location and identity
of each object. Spatial working memory and verbal
working memory was tested through this. The
coordination of information kept in SVM and VM
requires the central executive.
IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
After analysis, we have come up with the following
results.
Fig 1: Time taken in first round by each participant.
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3. Fig 2: No of Trials in first round by each participant.
From the above graph it is derived that as for the
first round most of the children are exploring and
learning the game so the number of trails become
more as they were learning how to play the game. Few
children take much time with higher number of trails
as cognitive burden increases as they have
remembered each functionality of the game. Few learn
them earlier as they are familiar with these types of
game.
Fig 3: Time taken in third round by each participant.
Fig 4: No of Trials in third round by each participant.
From the above graph it is derived that as the round
increase the learnability of the children also improve as
the familiarity with the interface also enhance as user
now learn and memorize how to play the game. As good
learnability impact on the number of trail, as much as
user get familiar with the interface the number of trail
become less. But with increase with the round the
difficulty level also increases which increase the number
of trails as seen in above graphs and other graph mention
in Appendix A.
Fig 5: Completion Time (in seconds) taken by each
participant.
From the above graph we can see the efficiency of the
game is effect by cognitive load of the user. As the user
cognitive burden increase with each level the efficiency
also increase. From the above graph we can see that
completion time depend upon how easily children learn
to use the game as the learnability directly affect the
cognitive burden of the users. Most of the users were
taking time due to high recall as they have learn to
remember each step.
Fig 6: User Satisfaction
Results from the above figure shows the satisfaction
level of participants. 50% of them rate it good.
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4. V. CONCLUSION
From our experiment for Cognitive load analysis
for Children in Affordance based interaction, we
explored that Affordance based interaction do require
cognitive resources. In our experiments, it is seen
children uses memory resources for learnability that is
directly proportional to the number of trials.
We also see from the experiment that efficiency of
the game is directly proportional to cognitive load on
the user. This was proven by the fact that the
completion time for the game was more as users took
higher time to recall each step, which in turn depends
upon the cognitive load on individual player.
VI. REFERENCES
Baddeley, A. (2001). Is working memory still
working? American Psychologist, 56, 849–864.
Nick Pettit, What Are Affordances in Web Design?,
https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/affordances-web-
design
Baddeley, A. (1992). Working memory. Science,
255(5044), 556–559.
J. J. Gibson (1975). 'Affordances and behavior'. In E.
S. Reed & R. Jones (eds.), Reasons for Realism:
Selected Essays of James J. Gibson, pp. 410-411.
Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1 edn.
Norman, D. A. (1999). Affordance, conventions, and
design. Interactions, edn 6,38–42.
JOSEPH E. GRGIC , MARY L. STILL and
JEREMIAH D. STILL, “Effects of Cognitive Load on
Affordance-based Interactions”, Applied Cognitive
Psychology, Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 30: 1042–1051
(2016)
J. J. Gibson (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual
Perception. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH),
Boston.
Still, J. D., & Dark, V. J. (2008). An empirical
investigation of affordances and conventions. In: J. S.
Gero & A. K. Goel (Eds.), Design computing and
cognition ’08 (pp. 457–472). Dordrecht, The
Netherlands: Springer.
Maier, J. R. A., & Fadel, G. M. (2009). Affordance based
design: A rela-
tional theory for design. Journal of Research
Engineering Design, 20,
13–27. DOI:10.1007/s00163-008-0060-3.
Still, J. D., & Dark, V. J. (2010). Examining working
memory load and con-
gruency effects on affordances and conventions.
International Journal
Human-Computer Studies, 68, 561–571.
DOI:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.03.003.
VII. ANNEXURE A
International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 17, No. 5, May 2019
133 https://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/
ISSN 1947-5500

5. 5
International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 17, No. 5, May 2019
134 https://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/
ISSN 1947-5500