Cognitive Load and Foreign-Language Anxiety in Second-Language Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Cognitive load and foreign-language anxiety are often examined separately in second-language learning, although both may arise when limited processing resources are strained. This meta-analysis examined whether the two constructs covary and why their association matters for models of L2 performance. A PRISMA-guided review identified eleven eligible studies (N = 1250), which were synthesised using a random-effects model. Two independent machine coders repeated the full-text eligibility assessment, effect-size extraction, and quality appraisal; two of the authors then verified every coding against the source reports and resolved all discrepancies. This process recovered one wrongly excluded study and corrected one misextracted coefficient. Greater load was associated with greater anxiety, r = 0.41, 95% CI [0.29, 0.52], and the estimate was r = 0.37, 95% CI [0.27, 0.46], after the most influential study was removed. All included estimates were positive. A specification analysis that substituted every available alternative component, wave, subscale, subgroup, and path yielded pooled estimates from 0.38 to 0.45; setting all eleven studies simultaneously to their least and most favourable alternatives widened the range to 0.29–0.52. Heterogeneity was high, I2 = 80.1%, and the 95% prediction interval [0.03, 0.69] extended almost to zero. The pooled estimate therefore represents the centre of a dispersed literature rather than an expected result for a new study. An exploratory contrast between real-time and self-paced tasks was not significant and was confounded with language skill. The review also identified a reporting gap: thirteen additional reports measured both constructs but provided no statistic linking them. Conventional publication-bias diagnostics cannot address this form of selective non-reporting, which means that the pooled estimate is best regarded as an upper bound. This first construct-specific synthesis of the load–anxiety association connects cognitive architecture and attentional control with research on L2 anxiety and indicates why instructional studies should assess cognitive and affective outcomes together. Because the evidence is concurrent, predominantly self-reported, and drawn almost entirely from Chinese-speaking settings, it cannot establish that either construct causes the other or that both reflect a single mechanism.