I don't have an academic library to hand - but I'd guess you would have seen the phrase in the sixties in academia, but it probably didn't have the same meaning

I don't have an academic library to hand - but I'd guess you would have seen the phrase in the sixties in academia, but it probably didn't have the same meaning as it does today. The roots of the idea of cognitive load - rather than the phrase itself - can be traced back to Miller's seminal (and much misinterpreted) "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" (http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Miller%20GA%20Magical%20Seven%20Psych%20Review%201955.pdf http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Mill...) although he didn't use the term "cognitive load" itself. The term "cognitive load" was certainly used in the 60's and 70's - I remember reading it in papers - but IIRC it didn't really have any formal definition or model at that point. Modern uses of cognitive load track back to John Sweller's development of Cognitive Load Theory in the 80's. It was his work that really popularised it and pushed it out as a well recognised term in things like instructional design and the various disciplines that have morphed into what we now call UX.