The Effect of Cognitive Exhaustion and Working Memory on Cognitive Problem Solving

An experiment was designed and administered to study the effect of working memory and cognitive exhaustion on cognitive problem solving performance. First, 80 male and female students whose scores on the working memory test was one standard deviation above and blow the mean were selected based on an information processingindex and randomly assigned into 8 groups each including 10 participants. The experimental consisted of cognitive exhaustion and problem-solving tasks for the experimental group and a problemsolving tasks for the control group. We also included the effect of gender in this investigation. Finally, having compared the experimental and the control group through independent t-test, we analyzed the data through a three- way ANOVA test. The results showed that in the problem-solving situation had better performance of male student for female student. The results also indicated that hadsignificant the effect of group variable (control and experiment group) and working memory variable (above and blow) on performance problem- solving, but, nosignificant reciprocal interaction none of variables.