When a learner's expertise increases, imagining concepts or solutions may be superior to studying the material about the same processes. This is also a corollary of the Expertise Reversal Effect.

Johns Hopkins University

1. The Worked Example Effect
2. The Expertise Reversal Effect
3. The Problem Completion Effect and the Guidance Fading Effects
4. The Imagination Effect

Other (less relevant) effects of extraneous load

Sweller, J. (2011). Cognitive load theory. In Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 55, pp. 37-76). Academic Press.

Cognitive Load Theory

Students learn more by studying a worked problem (i.e., problem and solution) than trying to solve the problem themselves. This is because problem-solving search requires one to process a larger number of elements that would generate a heavier extraneous cognitive load. 

The Worked Example Effect

Increase in the learner's expertise allows the said learner to incorporate elements into schemas and thereby lowers element interactivity, which decreases extraneous cognitive load. However, when information appropriate for novices is provided for an expert, parts of the information might be redundant which would cause the expert to have a greater extraneous cognitive load. 

The Expertise Reversal Effect

With an increase in expertise, moving from worked problems to completion problems and then to full problems would increase effectiveness of learning because of the expertise effect. This is also called the Guidance Fading Effect because in this method of instruction the guidance fades from full guidance gradually to none. 

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