The purpose of this study was to investigate why advance organizers (AO) are effective in promoting comprehension and mental model formation in terms of cognitive load. Two experimental groups: a concept-map AO group and a key-word AO group and one control group were used. This study considered cognitive load in view of Baddeley’s working memory model: central executive (CE), phonological loop (PL), and visuo-spatial sketch pad (VSSP). The present experiment directly examined cognitive load using dual task methodology. The results were as follows: central executive (CE) suppression task achievement for the concept map AO group was higher than the key word AO group and control group. Comprehension and mental model construction for the concept map AO group were higher than the other groups. These results indicated that the superiority of concept map AO owing to CE load decrement occurred with comprehension and mental model construction in learning. Thus, the available resources produced by CE load reduction may have been invested for comprehension and mental model construction of learning contents.