Education Shortform
What is Working Memory?
In a nutshell…
Working memory is a system that supports the brief, temporary storage of information.
Most of the information that goes into working memory is rapidly forgotten without having a lasting impact on your knowledge — a room number that you check just before going to class, for example. However it is essential for day-to-day processing and for the manipulation of any new information — and is therefore involved in all of the language, writing, listening and problem-solving tasks.
There is universal agreement among psychologists that working memory is limited in its capacity — it can only hold and process a small amount of information at a time — and therefore it shouldn’t be overloaded. Cognitive load theory looks at the implications of overloading; in general, learners should not receive too much information, too fast.
But how much is too much? This seems to depend partly on their existing level of knowledge; more well developed schema knowledge makes it quicker and easier to process incoming information. Read more on the working memory concept here…
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This is one of a series of shortform education articles. You can download a simplified summary of my ‘A–Z of Educational concepts’ here.
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