Based off the following TED talk Peter Doolittle: How your “working memory” makes sense of the world
4 basic components
- Allows us store some immediate experiences and a little bit of knowledge
- Allows us to reach back into our long term memory and pull ideas in as we need them
- Mixes and processes memory in light of what our current goal is
Current goal is the immediate action at hand
Working memory capacity is our ability to leverage our current goals. People with high working memory capacity are good story tellers, do well in standardized tests and have high abilities in writing.
Working memory is limited in capacity With working memory we can remember 4 things for about 20 seconds unless we do something with it (process it, talk to someone about it, etc).
There are some strategies we can use around working memory capacity
- Need to repeat and practice (think about it, talk to people, write it down, practice it over time)
- Need to think elaboratively and illustrively (take all of our existince and wrap it around)
- Use imagery, we are built for remembering images
- We are meaning making machines, we need to structure things in a way that makes sense
