Cog­ni­tive train­ing is show­ing a tremen­dous poten­tial to expand work­ing mem­ory, a capac­ity once thought lim­ited and untrainable.

If you have enough work­ing mem­ory to both be pro­cess­ing this infor­ma­tion and devel­op­ing your own thoughts, you may be think­ing now, a) what exactly is Work­ing Mem­ory?, and b) why do we even care?. Well, Dr. Bill Klemm answers those ques­tions, and more, below. Please enjoy one of the most insight­ful arti­cles on the sub­ject we have seen in a long while, which we are proud to bring to Sharp­Brains readers.

- Alvaro

How Well Peo­ple Think Depends On Work­ing Memory

- By  Dr. Bill Klemm

Imag­ine dial­ing a phone num­ber by hav­ing to look up each digit one at a time in the phone book. Nor­mally, you look up the num­ber and remem­ber all seven dig­its long enough to get it dialed. Even with one digit at a time, you would have to remem­ber each digit long enough to get it dialed. What if your brain could not even do that! We call this kind of remem­ber­ing, “work­ing mem­ory,” because that is what the brain works with. Work­ing mem­ory is crit­i­cal to every­day living.

Con­scious thought involves mov­ing a suc­ces­sion of items through what seems like a vir­tual scratch-pad. Think of it like stream­ing audio/video, where “thought bites” move on to the scratch pad where they are fed into a thought process and then moved off the scratch pad to make room for the next thought bite.

We think with what is in work­ing or “scratch pad” mem­ory. What we know, stored in reg­u­lar mem­ory, is brought onto the scratch pad in suc­ces­sive stages, each involv­ing sub­ject­ing the knowl­edge to analy­sis, inte­gra­tion into the cur­rent con­text, and cre­ative re-organization via our think­ing processes (“thought engine”). The ani­mated ver­sion of this graphic shows item 1 mov­ing on to the scratch pad and then sent on to the “thought engine.” This is fol­lowed by item 2, then 3, etc.

Con­scious think­ing thus requires the abil­ity to hold infor­ma­tion “on line” long enough to use it in think­ing. Con­scious thought thus seems to be a seri­ally ordered process of mov­ing thought bites on to and off of the scratch pad.

Uncon­scious Think­ing

What about uncon­scious thought … the kind that occurs when you are not pay­ing atten­tion? We know that the sub­con­scious mind is pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion (i.e. “think­ing”) all the time, even while we sleep. The evi­dence for this kind of “sleep learn­ing” is incon­tro­vert­ible and sum­ma­rized in my mem­ory improve­ment book (see http://thankyoubrain.com). Sub­con­scious think­ing and its related mem­o­ries may not involve a scratch pad of work­ing mem­ory. Sub­con­scious think­ing could occur as mul­ti­ple par­al­lel processes and may be more non-linear than con­scious thought. How­ever, in the case of dream sleep, which I regard as a form of con­scious­ness, those dreams that I hap­pen to remem­ber do seem to be based on seri­ally ordered “thought bites.”

A recent study, not explic­itly con­cern­ing mem­ory, sheds some impor­tant light both on how we think and on the role of work­ing mem­ory in thought. In this study, the researchers exam­ined how peo­ple make a cor­rect choice. Researchers com­pared the qual­ity of deci­sions formed from con­scious ver­sus uncon­scious think­ing with that result­ing from uncon­scious think­ing. Here is how they stud­ied this issue. In one study, sub­jects were given infor­ma­tion about the attrib­utes of four hypo­thet­i­cal cars, and they were to decide which was the best car, based on the attrib­utes assigned to each car. Analy­sis con­di­tions were either sim­ple (based on only four attrib­utes) or com­plex (based on 12 attrib­utes). After read­ing about the attrib­utes, sub­jects were assigned to one of two groups: con­scious analy­sis or to an uncon­scious thought con­di­tion. In the con­scious con­di­tion, they thought about the attrib­utes for four min­utes before mak­ing a choice. In the uncon­scious con­di­tion, sub­jects were told they would have to make a choice in four min­utes, but they were dis­tracted dur­ing that time by being required to solve anagrams.

Their “think­ing” about the prob­lem was thus not allowed to be conscious.

Not sur­pris­ingly, when only four attrib­utes were involved, sub­jects in the conscious-thought con­di­tion made the best choice of car. But when the com­plex con­di­tion of 12 attrib­utes, results reversed. The best car was cho­sen most reli­ably in the unconscious-thought condition.

In a sec­ond study, one change was made. Instead of choos­ing the best car, sub­jects were asked about their atti­tudes toward the four cars. Again, con­scious thinkers made the clear­est dis­tinc­tions among the cars when only four attrib­utes were con­sid­ered, but the oppo­site occurred when 12 attrib­utes had to be considered.

In another exper­i­ment, two stores were selected, one that sold com­pli­cated items like fur­ni­ture and the other a depart­ment store that sold sim­ple prod­ucts. As peo­ple left the store, peo­ple were asked ques­tions about what they bought, why they bought it, how costly was it, and how much they thought about mak­ing the choice. The buy­ers were cat­e­go­rized as either “thinkers” (those who spent a lot of time con­sciously mak­ing a deci­sion) and “impulse buy­ers” (who did not spend much time con­sciously think­ing about their choice). Sev­eral weeks later, these same peo­ple were called to check on how sat­is­fied they were with the pur­chase. As expected, more post-choice sat­is­fac­tion was found in the con­scious thinker group, but only for the sim­ple items in the depart­ment store. For the com­plex choices in the fur­ni­ture store, the uncon­scious thinkers expressed the most sat­is­fac­tion with their purchases.

What all this says is that sim­ple deci­sions are best made by care­ful con­scious thought. But for com­pli­cated deci­sions, the best choices may result from “delib­er­a­tion with­out pay­ing atten­tion,” that is let­ting the think­ing be done by the uncon­scious mind. I inter­pret these results to reflect the depen­dence of con­scious thought on scratch-pad mem­ory and the rel­a­tive inde­pen­dence of sub­con­scious thought on scratch-pad mem­ory. Con­scious thought is very effec­tive as long as it can work on infor­ma­tion that it can hold on-line in work­ing mem­ory. But work­ing mem­ory has lim­ited capac­ity. There­fore it can­not be very effec­tive when the amount of infor­ma­tion needed for high-quality thought exceeds the car­ry­ing capac­ity of work­ing memory.

The corol­lary of this new evi­dence about work­ing mem­ory and think­ing processes is that if we had a big­ger work­ing mem­ory, we might think better.

Work­ing Mem­ory Load Affects Pay­ing Atten­tion

Pay­ing atten­tion is pre-requisite to learn­ing. The abil­ity to pay atten­tion seems to be affected by how much infor­ma­tion (load) is being car­ried in work­ing mem­ory. These prin­ci­ples have been elu­ci­dated in human exper­i­ments that tested the assump­tion that attend­ing to rel­e­vant details in a learn­ing sit­u­a­tion requires that the details be held in work­ing mem­ory. Hav­ing other, non-relevant, infor­ma­tion in work­ing mem­ory at the same time serves as a dis­trac­tion, low­er­ing atten­tion and inter­fer­ing with mem­ory formation.

In this exper­i­ment, par­tic­i­pants per­formed an atten­tion task that required them to ignore pic­tures of dis­tracter faces while hold­ing in work­ing mem­ory a string of dig­its that were in the same order (low mem­ory load) or dif­fer­ent order (high mem­ory order) on every trial. The test thus was one of multi-tasking, one task being hold­ing the dig­its in work­ing mem­ory and the other task being iden­ti­fy­ing whether a name flashed on the screen was that of a famous politi­cian or a pop star, while a con­tra­dic­tory face was pro­jected. For exam­ple, the name Mick Jag­ger would have the face of Bill Clin­ton super­im­posed, and the task was to know that Mick Jag­ger is a pop star, not a politician.

The atten­tion per­for­mance degraded severely with high working-memory load. That is, the dis­tract­ing faces cre­ated con­fu­sion when sub­jects were also required to hold mixed-order dig­its in work­ing mem­ory at the same time.

The point is sim­ple. It is hard to think about two com­pli­cated things at once. The grow­ing trend, espe­cially among young peo­ple, to multi-task may seem won­der­ful. But actu­ally, multi-tasking is most likely to inter­fere with focused atten­tion and, in turn, degrade mem­ory for­ma­tion, recall, and think­ing quality.

Train­ing Work­ing Mem­ory and IQ

Stud­ies have shown that it is pos­si­ble to train ADHD chil­dren to have bet­ter work­ing mem­o­ries. This led researchers in Japan to try to develop a sim­ple work­ing mem­ory train­ing method and to test whether this method can increase the work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and whether this has any effect on a child’s IQ. Chil­dren ages 6–8 were trained 10 min­utes a day each day for two months. The train­ing task to expand work­ing mem­ory capac­ity con­sisted of pre­sent­ing a digit or a word item for a sec­ond, with one-second inter­vals between items. For exam­ple, a sequence might be 5, 8, 4, 7, with one-second inter­vals between each digit. Test for recall could take the form of “Where in the sequence was the 4?” or “What was the third item?” Thus stu­dents had to prac­tice hold­ing the item sequence in work­ing mem­ory. With prac­tice, the train­ers increased the num­ber of items from 3 to 8.

After train­ing, researchers tested the chil­dren on another work­ing mem­ory task. Scores on this test indi­cated that work­ing mem­ory cor­re­lated with IQ test scores. That is, chil­dren with bet­ter work­ing mem­ory abil­ity also had higher IQs. When first graders were tested for intel­li­gence, the data showed that intel­li­gence scores increased dur­ing the year by 6% in con­trols, but increased by 9% in the group that had been given the mem­ory train­ing. The mem­ory train­ing effect was even more evi­dent in the sec­ond graders, with a 12% gain in intel­li­gence score in the mem­ory trained group, com­pared with a 6% gain in con­trols. As might be expected, the lower IQ chil­dren showed the great­est gain from mem­ory training.

So in con­clu­sion, it seems that work­ing mem­ory capac­ity can be increased by train­ing and that such train­ing can even raise IQ, at least in young children.

Ben­e­fits of Increas­ing Work­ing Memory

Accu­mu­lat­ing evi­dence seems to indi­cate that work­ing mem­ory, with proper train­ing, can be improved in any­one, even adults. I recently found a research report in which last­ing improve­ments in brain func­tion were pro­duced in healthy adults by only five weeks of prac­tice on three working-memory tasks that involved the loca­tion of objects in space. Sub­jects per­formed 90 tri­als per day on a train­ing reg­i­men (CogMed). MRI scans showed increased activ­ity in the cor­ti­cal areas that were involved in pro­cess­ing the visual stim­uli. Brain activ­ity increases in these areas appeared within the first week and grew over time.

Sim­i­lar results have been reported by other inves­ti­ga­tors. In a few cases, where dif­fer­ent kinds of stim­uli were used, mem­ory train­ing induced a decrease of brain activ­ity in cer­tain areas, which is inter­preted to indi­cate that the trained brain did not have to work as hard. While we clearly don’t under­stand things very well, it seems clear that work­ing mem­ory train­ing not only improves mem­ory capa­bil­ity but also causes last­ing changes in the brain.

Help Your Working-Memory Capac­ity

I just read a fas­ci­nat­ing book on increas­ing teacher aware­ness of the impor­tance of working-memory capac­ity for teach­ing and learn­ing strate­gies. Many young­sters have work­ing mem­ory lim­i­ta­tions, and they usu­ally do not grow out of them. This is a major and seri­ous cause of low grades, poor learn­ing skills, poor con­fi­dence, and life-long dimin­ished moti­va­tion to learn.

Lim­ited working-memory capac­ity impairs the abil­ity to think and solve prob­lems. I was told once by a middle-school teacher that her “spe­cial needs” stu­dents could do the same math as reg­u­lar stu­dents, but they just can’t remem­ber all the steps. This clearly reflects a lim­ited working-memory capac­ity. If the demands made on work­ing mem­ory could be less­ened, bet­ter think­ing could result.

Cer­tain strate­gies can help to reduce the load on work­ing mem­ory. Teach­ers should model and stu­dents should employ the fol­low­ing devices:

• Pro­vide help, cues, mnemon­ics, reminders.
• KISS (Keep It Sim­ple, Stupid!)(example: use short, sim­ple sen­tences, present much of the instruc­tion as pictures/diagrams).
• Don’t present so much infor­ma­tion. Less can be more.
• Facil­i­tate rehearsal, using only rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and no distractors.
• Get engaged, by tak­ing notes, and cre­at­ing dia­grams and con­cept maps.
• Attach mean­ing from what is already known. (The more you know, the more you can know).
• Orga­nize infor­ma­tion in small categories.
• Break down tasks into small chunks. Mas­ter each chunk sequen­tially, one at a time.

Doing these things not only helps the think­ing process, but will also pro­mote the for­ma­tion of last­ing mem­o­ries. The process of con­vert­ing work­ing mem­ory into per­ma­nent form is called con­sol­i­da­tion, and I will explain that next time.

— W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. Sci­en­tist, pro­fes­sor, author, speaker As a pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity, Bill has taught about the brain and behav­ior at all lev­els, from fresh­men, to seniors, to grad­u­ate stu­dents to post-docs. His recent books include Thank You Brain For All You Remem­ber and Core Ideas in Neu­ro­science.

Related arti­cles on Work­ing Mem­ory Training

- Can Intel­li­gence Be Trained? Mar­tin Buschkuehl shows how

- Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Klingberg

- Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing for Adults

Sources

1. Repovs, G and Bres­janac, M. 2006. Cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science of work­ing mem­ory: a pro­logue. Neu­ro­science. 139: 1–3.

2. Dijk­ster­huis, A. et al. 2006. On mak­ing the right choice: the deliberation-without-attention effect. Sci­ence. 311: 1005–1007.

3. Wajima, Kayo, and Sawaguchi, T. 2005. The effect of work­ing mem­ory train­ing on gen­eral intel­li­gence in chil­dren. Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science Abstracts. Abstract 772.11.

4. de Fock­ert, J. W. et al. 2001. The role of work­ing mem­ory in visual selec­tive atten­tion. Sci­ence. 291: 1803–1806.

5. Ole­sen, P. J., West­er­berg, H., and King­berg, T. 2004. Increased pre­frontal and pari­etal activ­ity after train­ing of work­ing mem­ory. Nature Neu­ro­science. 7: 75–79.

6. Gath­er­cole, Susan E., and Alloway, Tracy P. 2008. Work­ing Mem­ory and Learn­ing. Sage Pub­li­ca­tions, 124 pages.

7. Gath­er­cole, Susan E., and Alloway, Tracy P. 2008. Work­ing mem­ory and learn­ing. Sage Pub­li­ca­tions, . 124 pages.

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