Your Working Memory used to be known as one's "Short-Term Memory", but is now often called Bottleneck, Workbench or Scratchpad.
The working memory can have 7 + or - 2 pieces of information. It's space is limited. As some of you might have learned from the video link this is where the seven digits of a phone number came from.
To get information into the Working Memory one has to rehearsal.
There are two types of rehearsal:
There are two types of rehearsal:
Maintenance Rehearsal: repeating information over and over again, like one might to remember lines in a school play.
Elaborate Rehearsal: associating information to be learned with information already stored in your long-term memory. This adds meaning, like remembering a dog breed because your cousin has that kind of dog.
Two Ways to Get More Information in:
Automaticity: background knowledge or experience. In other words, what you know!
Mnemonics, Chunking, Etc.: how you organize your information!
Example of a mnemonic: My very excited mother just served us nachos for the planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
Automaticity: background knowledge or experience. In other words, what you know!
Mnemonics, Chunking, Etc.: how you organize your information!
Example of a mnemonic: My very excited mother just served us nachos for the planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
Scientists are often finding more and more things out about our memory and the way it works! It is a common idea now that our working memory can be broken down into three different pieces:
1. "The Central Executive," which controls where one's attention goes.
2. "The Visuospatial Sketchpad," which tells you about the pictures you see.
3. "The Phonological Loop," which refers mainly to what you hear and say (helps with becoming bilingual).
(Baddeley, 1992).
1. "The Central Executive," which controls where one's attention goes.
2. "The Visuospatial Sketchpad," which tells you about the pictures you see.
3. "The Phonological Loop," which refers mainly to what you hear and say (helps with becoming bilingual).
(Baddeley, 1992).
Click Here for more in depth explanation of these three breakdowns of Working Memory