Working Memory – Where we make our plans and intentions
Have you ever taught a student who could memorize their spelling words for a test, but couldn’t spell the same words correctly while writing an essay? Or seen a student searching fervently for an answer, only to forget the question you asked? Both of these students were experiencing a problem with their working memory, or the place in the brain where connections between short-term and long-term memory are made. If a student’s working memory becomes too full, it lets go of earlier information to process incoming information. This is what happened to the student searching for an answer, taking in lots of information in his or her search, and then forgetting the question. Understanding active working memory is very important when working with struggling learners and students with learning disabilities. Learning to differentiate our instruction so our teaching techniques support working memory and our interventions are appropriate is critical when considering RTI responses. Active working memory accomplishes four tasks:
- Provides a “mind space” to combine or develop ideas
- Holds together the parts of a task while doing it
- Provides a “meeting place” for short-term and long-term memory to “network”
- Offers a place for multiple immediate plans and intentions
Working memory is where all the parts of a process are held together. When you’re planning a vacation, working memory is where the reminders to rent a car, make flight reservations, and find a hotel are all kept. Working memory is where everything goes before it gets moved to long-term memory. It’s what you’re using right now as you read and process this information.
When working with students, especially those with a learning disability or who are simply struggling in a particular subject area, it is also important to understand how stress affects working memory. When the brain is stressed – when it’s in ‘fight or flight’ mode – chemicals are released in the brain that alert the body to get ready to defend itself.
Unfortunately however, the brain doesn’t know the difference between a piece of paper with a test on it and a charging tiger. When the brain feels threatened, it reacts by releasing the ‘fight or flight’ chemicals. Those chemicals shut down working memory, and the information we were working with is gone. One of these ‘fight or flight’ chemicals, cortisol, can seriously impact working memory. It shuts down memory and can even permanently impair memory over time.
Experts believe that too much stress is harmful to our memory because it can cause too much cortisol to be released into our system. When we have students who have demonstrated that they know information but can’t remember it on a test, it’s likely that their active working memory has shut down. Once we understand how working memory works, and how a stressful situation, such as taking a test, can impair that memory, we can take steps to help students’ working memories perform better.
For example, while we would not want students to use a calculator during a test to see if they have memorized their multiplications tables, a calculator would be appropriate to use during an algebra test. This is because when solving a higher-level process, a calculator allows students to think at that higher level more successfully since their working memory is not busy trying to remember that 5 X 9 = 45.