Remember these words

Mountain

Owl

Never

Tooth

Hungry

We’ll get back to those words in a bit.

Working Memory involves storing and working with information and requires good concentration and focus. In everyday life, it is implicated in activities such as following directions, tracking a classroom lecture, and remembering what your parent or spouse said. New research reveals that working memory is one of the strongest predictors of academic performance.

The learning process involves attending to information in the first place which is attention.  Then, you have to encode it or make it meaningful, store it, and then recall: recall for later use: – whether for a test, an assignment, or real life.

Do you remember the words?

Mountain, Owl, Never, Tooth, Hungry

How did you encode the information you were presented?

Did you use an auditory feedback loop where you repeated the words to yourself?  This can be a good strategy but what happens when a list becomes too long?  What happens if you are still trying to remember the first word and the person talking is already on the fourth word?

“Did you use a visual picture?  Perhaps you created a picture in your mind’s eye.”

“Did you use a heuristic? Perhaps you used the first letter of each word and realized that it made the word:

M ountain

O wl

N ever

T ooth

H ungry

“Maybe you used a narrative format and created a story”

There’s an owl on a mountain, and he doesn’t have a tooth because he never gets hungry.

Using strong and effective working memory strategies allows you to make information meaningful rather than just allowing data to passively wash over you. The importance of working memory cannot be underestimated and is made more powerful if you actively engage it.

As information comes in, you have to process it at the same time as you store it. The more you know about how you learn –visual, auditory, or multisensory; and use a strategy that works for you, the more you can expand your working memory and improve your learning.