Roles of working memory performance and instructional strategy in complex cognitive task performance V. Cevik* & A. Altun† *Gaziosmanpasa Universitesi, Egitim Fakultesi, BOTE Bolumu, Tokat, Turkey †Hacettepe Universitesi, Edebiyat D Kapisi, BOTE Bolumu, Ankara, Turkey Abstract This study aims to investigate how working memory (WM) performances and instructional strat- egy choices affect learners’ complex cognitive task performance in online environments. Three different e-learning environments were designed based on Merrill’s (2006a) model of instruc- tional strategies. The lack of experimental research on his framework is the main argument of this paper. The participants’ WM processes with the n-back task scores were used for defining their WM performances. This study is designed as repeated measures. Thirty-five undergraduate students completed complex cognitive tasks three times. According to their WM groups, the par- ticipants were assigned to experimental conditions randomly by counterbalancing. The main re- sults of the study indicated that although no performance differences were observed in complex cognitive tasks across instructional strategies, there was a statistically significant change observed across WM groups in favour of those who had high WM performances. The interaction effect did not have an effect on participants’ overall performance. These results indicate that cognitive differences lead to different outcomes when the instructional design is set to be the same for all. Therefore, it is concluded that instructional design choices could take individual cognitive differences into account when developing adaptive e-learning environments. Keywords complex cognitive tasks, working memory, instructional strategy, task performance. Introduction Learners are increasingly being exposed to e-learning materials as technology becomes more available and the number of online courses increases. Depending on the nature of the course, learners are provided the content in various multimedia formats, the activities to engage in, as well as the hyperlinks to navigate around the course materials. From a programming perspective, the links and materials represent a learning space where learners are expected to benefit from by using multimodal content with a variety of hyperlinks to access to these contents. According to some researchers, such online environ- ments could be described as complex or cognitively overloaded based on the design choices (i.e., Mayer, 2009). Simply by following certain principles, one may reduce the cognitive load and make the environment learner-friendly. Yet, from the learners’ perspective, it is not clear whether it is the content or merely the design choice that could make the online environment (more) complex. Moreover, cognitive differences play a crucial role during individuals’ interactions with(in) the course materials (e.g., Campbell, 1988). Thus, it is important to understand to what extent learning performances are affected by indi- vidual differences, such as learners’ working memory (WM) capacity. In addition, less understood is whether Accepted: 26 June 2016 Correspondence: Cevik, Vildan, Gaziosmanpasa Universitesi, Egitim Fakultesi, BOTE Bolumu, 60150 Tokat, Turkey. Email: vildan. cevik@gop.edu.tr © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 1 doi: 10.1111/jcal.12156 Original article