Cognitive-Affective Theory of Learning with Media

The cognitive-affective theory of learning with media, often abbreviated CATLM, is a theory of multimedia learning developed by the researcher Roxana Moreno as an extension of Richard Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Like Mayer's theory, CATLM assumes that learners process information through two separate channels, one for visual and pictorial material and one for auditory and verbal material, and that each channel has a limited capacity for how much information it can hold and process actively at one time. CATLM extends that cognitive account by adding motivational and affective factors, such as a learner's interest, self-efficacy and emotional state, and metacognitive factors, such as a learner's own monitoring and regulation of their learning process, as elements that interact with the cognitive processing of multimedia material and can either support or interfere with learning depending on how a lesson is designed. The theory proposes that a learner's motivation affects how much cognitive effort they are willing to invest in processing multimedia content, so that a well-designed multimedia lesson must attend not only to reducing unnecessary cognitive load, the concern at the center of Mayer's original theory, but also to sustaining the learner's motivation and helping them regulate their own attention and effort throughout the lesson. In education, CATLM has been used to explain why multimedia lessons that are well designed by purely cognitive-load criteria can still fail to produce good learning outcomes if they do not also engage learners' motivation or support their capacity to self-regulate while working through the material.