Memory And Working Memory

In the article “Memory’s Limit is Even Lower: 4 Things At Once”, author Clara Moskowitz says that researchers once debated that the conscious mind or working memory can only contain three to four items at one time. In fact, the working memory is just a section within the short-term memory that makes it easier to access information within the brain. The working memory also correlates with the knowledge that we can be aware of and control.

Moskowitz states that scholars once believed that the working memory could only sustain about seven items, therefore giving some explanation to the fact that telephone numbers have seven numbers. However, nowadays scholars believe that the ideas that a working memory are much lower when the person is not

allowed to use any aids to remembering, such as repeating and grouping.
For instance, as stated by Nelson Cowan a psychologist from the University of Missouri-Columbia with his coworkers Jeff Rouder and Richard Mourey, telephone numbers are grouped in three and four numbers, which aids in the remembrance of the numbers. According to the study that Cowan, Rouder and Mourey did, published on April 14 in the Journal Proceedings of the National Acadamey of Sciences, they discovered that the limit of remembering with grouping is getting closer to the limit of remembering without aids. Cowan stated that society is becoming more and more accepting that their memory may not be as good as they might think.
To test the capacity of a human’s working memory, first, Rouder, Mourey and Cowan had to think of a way that humans could not fit into a pattern or use memory aids with. So the scientists came up with a test involving showing the subject squares of different colors. First, the scientists showed the subjects an arrangement of colored squares. Next, the subjects were shown the same arrangement again, however, this time the squares had no color. Then, the subjects were shown one square in the same location as in the beginning of the experiment and asked which color belonged to the square.
Praising Cowan’s experiment; psychologist, Michael Kane from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, stated that the use of the different colored squares made it hard to apply any sort of memory aid, while as remembering spoken lists it was quite easy to apply memory aids.
There seems to be a limit of items that can be available in the working memory, however, there are people out there that have mastered their memories using tricks and strategies. For example, on September 2007 in Bahrain the world’s greatest memory master gathered for the World Memory Championship. The contestants exhibited hard-to-believe memories, in which they could recite hundreds of digits in order with the list that they only studied for five minutes. For normal human beings this task would be impossible, however, for these memory masters it just seemed to be a simple everyday task. This just goes to show that with hard work, dedication, tactics and a few tricks anything can be mastered, including the working memory.
As stated by Kane, a runner once was asked to remember a list of numbers.

Normally this would be a pretty difficult task, however, the runner associated the list of numbers with his running times. As a result, the runner was capable of remembering lists just under 80 numbers. Conversely, if the runner was asked to remember a list of words, the runner simply couldn’t do it. The runner could remember the same amount as a normal human, which is about five to nine words.

A very difficult mathematical quiz has been put in place by scientists, said Cowan, to investigate the true limit on people’s working memories. This study has been built upon existing research, but includes a mathematical equation. This team of researchers accepted that humans have a certain number of empty spaces available for their working memories. This study suggests that once the working memory is filled, then the subject will start guessing. This equation was able to predict the outcomes with remarkable accuracy.

The mathematical equation was simple and the answer was simple, said Cowan, but the different scenarios that were taken into effect and the array of information that was predicted was somewhat

complicated.
Working memory is unique to every human being, even though the average is around a three to four capacity. It has been proven that the working memory is in line with reading comprehension, problem solving and learning.
Having a good working memory can directly affect whether you have good problem solving skills or not, stated Cowan.

Therefore, having a good working memory can in turn make you a smarter person.

The capabilities of the working memory have not been found to be directly related to genetics, education or environments, in fact, researchers are clueless when it comes to where the working memory comes from.

Children can benefit significantly from practicing with their working memory because it has been proven that test scores and the overall quality of the student is improved. However, children are not the only ones that can benefit from the bettering their working memory, adults also can develop better working memories.

According to Kane, training your working memory can increase additional things over time. In fact, Kane says that the relationship between the working memory and the attention of person is very significant.

It has been disputed among scientists whether or not the working memory is a part of the long-term memory or the two memories are completely separate of one another. However, many scientists agree that all memories that are made are stored in the long-term memory. They also agree that forgetting memories is just simply not being capable of accessing that

memory.
As Cowan stated, the memory gets encoded into the long-term memory, however, the retrieving of that memory may be extremely difficult due to the fact that the encoding may not have been unique enough to retrieve it again. Cowan said that the memory is inside your mind somewhere, the hard part is just trying to access it.