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Click below for some videos regarding Working Memory:
This video is from How to ADHD and explains what working memory is.
This video is from Medmastery and explains how working memory is involved in learning.
Downloadable PDF - What is working memory?
Information adapted from Understood.org, Study.com and International Dyslexia Association
Working Memory
Working memory is a type of short-term memory that stores information temporarily during the completion of cognitive tasks, such as comprehension, problem solving, reasoning, and learning. This temporary storage does not cause any changes in the brain, since it is short-lived and momentary.
Working memory is one of the brain’s executive functions. It’s a skill that allows us to work with information without losing track of what we’re doing. Think of working memory as a temporary sticky note in the brain. It holds new information in place so the brain can work with it briefly and connect it with other information.
There are two types of working memory: auditory memory and visual-spatial memory. You can think of these skills in terms of making a video. Auditory memory records what you’re hearing while visual-spatial memory captures what you’re seeing.
Working Memory Examples
In our daily lives, we regularly use working memory to complete tasks and go about our day. For example:
Keeping a person's address in mind while being given directions
Keeping elements or the sequence of a story in mind before the person completes telling it
Dialing a telephone number that you were just told
Calculating the total bill of your groceries as you are shopping (mental math)
Ways in which students use working memory in the classroom:
1. Working memory and accessing information
Imagine a teacher reads a word problem in math class. Students need to be able to
keep all the numbers in their head,
figure out what operation to use
create a written math problem at the same time.
Students with weak working memory skills find it difficult to listen for clue words that indicate which operation to use, while at the same time remembering the numbers that need to be plugged into the equation.
2. Working memory and remembering instructions
Students rely on both incoming information and information stored in working memory to do an activity.
If they have weak working memory skills, it’s hard to juggle both.
This can make it challenging to follow multi-step directions.
Students with weak working memory skills have trouble keeping in mind what comes next while they’re doing what comes now.
For example, your student may not be able to mentally “go back” and recall what sentence the teacher wanted written down while also trying to remember how to spell out the words in that sentence.
3. Working memory and paying attention
The part of the brain responsible for working memory is also responsible for maintaining focus and concentration.
Working memory skills help students remember what they need to be paying attention to.
For example with long division, your student needs working memory not only to come up with the answer, but also to concentrate on all of the steps involved in getting there.
Students with weak working memory skills have trouble staying on task to get to the end result. (You could think of it like the learning equivalent of walking into a room and forgetting what you came in to get.)
4. Working memory and learning to read
Working memory is responsible for many of the skills children use to learn to read:
Auditory working memory helps students hold on to the sounds letters make long enough to sound out new words.
Visual working memory helps students remember what those words look like so they can recognize them throughout the rest of a sentence.
When working effectively, these skills keep students from having to sound out every word they see.
This helps them read with less hesitation and become fluent readers.
A weak working memory can impede phonological learning and production at all levels.
Consider a frequent rhyming exercise for young students. “Tell me which word rhymes with fox: truck, dog, box.” To identify the two rhyming words, the student must hold and then compare all of the words in working memory (fox/truck, fox/dog, fox/box).
When older students attempt to sound out new words, they must use their working memory to hold the entire sequence of sounds long enough to blend those sounds together
When reading a long sentence, paragraph or passage, working memory is what allows us to hold on to and integrate information we read early on with information that comes later.
Students with strong decoding skills but weak working memories often comment that they “can’t remember anything!” from a page that they just read.
5. Working memory and learning math
Being able to solve math problems depends on a number of skills that build on one another like building blocks:
The block at the bottom — the most important one in the stack — is the ability to recognize and reproduce patterns.
It’s the foundation for the next block: seeing patterns in numbers in order to solve and remember basic math facts.
From there, students build up to storing information about a word problem in their head; they then use that information to create a number sentence to solve the problem.
This eventually leads to the ability to remember mathematical formulas.
What keeps the blocks from toppling over is the ability to remember, sequence, and visualize information — all of which can be difficult for a student with weak working memory skills.
Students with math learning disorders have pervasive weaknesses across all working memory components.
Young students with weak working memory make more errors when translating numbers from verbal to written form than do students with strong working memory.
The most persistent weakness in children with math learning difficulties is the ability to store and retrieve number combinations and facts from long-term memory.
As a result, working memory resources are not available for more complex aspects of mathematical processing.
Math fluency is disrupted because a slow and unpredictable response time is the outcome of lack of automaticity in retrieval of basic math facts.
Important Components in Working Memory
Working memory is important in attention, learning, and memory. Working memory involves three important components, including:
Encoding
Encoding is the process of learning knowledge and relating it to previous knowledge.
An example of encoding is when you pay attention to to certain things and ignore others, such as looking at a traffic light and encoding whether it is a red or green light, instead of focusing on trees or plants surrounding the car.
The key here is that the encoding component is selective.
It is also important to know that encoding memories may not be accurate, since your brain encodes an incredible amount of information every second, and this may cause false associations.
Storing
Storing the process of maintaining the memory over time.
When we store memories, our brains actually change structurally at the molecular level, such that memories may leave memory traces.
Retrieving
Retrieving is the process of accessing the memory or information when needed.
Hints and clues can definitely help someone trying to retrieve a specific memory, since most of our memories are deep in our memory storage systems.
Sometimes, a certain song or smell may ignite a memory someone has completely forgotten about, and this is because that song or smell was greatly tied into that memory.
Working Memory vs Long-Term Memory
The biggest differences between working memory and long-term memory are their duration and capacity.
In working memory, the memory or information is held for a limited period of time.
In long-term memory that information is held for a very long time, and sometimes for an entire lifetime.
Furthermore, working memory capacity is quite small and limited (between four to seven items at once), whereas long-term memory capacity is almost unlimited.
Working memory does not involve long-term changes in the way our brains are organized or how the cells work, but long-term memory does.
As such, working memory involves the temporary activation of the brain, whereas long-term memory brings about physiological changes within the brain's active networks and connections.
Below is an poster from JamesEdPsych that summarizes what Working Memory is and some useful strategies. Click the top right corner to download a PDF version.
wm-full-size-pdf.pdfClick on the buttons below for more information:
Working Memory: Further Learning
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