Capacity theory

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Capacity theory is the theoretical approach that pulled researchers from Filter theories with Kahneman's published 1973 study, Attention and Effort positing attention was limited in overall capacity, that a person's ability to perform simultaneous tasks depends on how much "capacity" the jobs require. Further researchers - Johnson and Heinz (1978) and Navon & Gopher (1979) - went further with Kahneman's study. Shalom Fisch used Kahneman's capacity theory, just as others did for their research, to publish a paper on children's understanding of educational content on television. It is a communication theory based on a model which is used to explain and predict how children learn from educational television programming. It is formed by combining cognitive psychology and limited capacity of working memory. Working memory is explained as having limited resources available for processing external information and when demands exceed capabilities, then the material will not be attended to. The model attempts to explain how cognitive resources are allocated when individuals, particularly children, comprehend both the educational and the narrative content of an educational program. Capacity theory suggests that when educational content is tangential to the narrative content the two information sources compete with one another for limited resources in working memory. However, when the distance between educational content and narrative content is small, the process complement one another rather than compete for resources, therefore an individual is likely to comprehend more.