شادی نوروزی - MA Holder, English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
حسین کرمی - Assistant Professor, English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
زری سعیدی - Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

The current study strived to delve into the response behavior and perceptions of examinees while taking a test in light of cognitive load theory. The empirical data were collected from ۶۰ MA English major graduates and students, with a high level of language proficiency. The participants were required to answer ۶۰ multiple-choice language items (i.e., grammar and vocabulary questions), taken from the high-stakes tests of the MA English majors of the Iranian university entrance examination (IUEE), as fast and as accurately as possible. After completing each test item, they rated their perceptions with regard to the difficulty of test items (Bratfisch et al., ۱۹۷۲) and the amount of mental effort (Paas, ۱۹۹۲). Their response time spent on each language item and their selected options were also stored by the Psychopy software (Peirce et al., ۲۰۱۹). Through running Pearson and Spearman rho correlations, the findings revealed that response time enjoyed a strong positive correlation with mental effort, meaning that both objective and subjective cognitive load measures matched in terms of sensitivity to cognitive load changes in language test items. Further, the subjective measures of perceived mental effort and perceived level of difficulty revealed to be the sound indicators of cognitive load changes. As predicted, response time also indicated that more difficult language test items imposed a greater amount of load. The implications of the study will be explained.

cognitive load, language test-items, multiple-choice questions, response-time, subjective/objective measures