Ahmed and Alison have submitted a new manuscript for publication. ChemRxiv has the preprint.
Youssef, A. M.; Flynn, A. B. “The language of organic chemistry: is fluency the key to success?” ChemRxiv, 2024, doi:10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-nz3kn. This content is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed.
What we found: a correlation between fluency in organic chemistry's "language" and cognitive load. The more fluent (proficient) a participant was in organic chemistry’s symbolism and representations (its “language”), the lower their cognitive load.
As educators
We believe that supporting students’ “language” fluency will help them: the more fluent they are, the more they can dedicate cognitive resources to analyzing more complex phenomena and concepts, rather than spending their time and energy on simply decoding the symbols.