This document discusses working memory, including its definition as the processing space in the mind/brain used for computing information. It describes common models of working memory that include multiple subsystems like the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad. Examples are given of how working memory explains phenomena like phonological confusions, word length effects, and irrelevant speech effects. The document also discusses that working memory has limits, capacities vary between individuals, and it is crucial for learning due to its role in holding information during effortful tasks.
4. Overview
What is working memory?
When do we use working memory?
Are there limits to working memory?
Does working memory capacity vary between people?
Why is working memory so crucial for learning?
6. What is working memory?
• Working memory is a psychological construct that refers to the
“processing space” in the mind/brain when a person computes
information.
• Working memory is, for example, where listeners fleetingly store
and process linguistic data to analyze it for comprehension.
• There are multiple theories and models of working memory, but
what they all have in common is the idea that working memory has
a limited capacity.
7. Working Memory: The Structure Beneath
Short-Term Memory
• STM behaves differently depending on whether the things to be
remembered are presented visually or auditorily, rapidly or
slowly, or whether the items activate information stored in long-
term memory and where in a sequence of facts a critical item
falls.
• Cognitive psychologists have developed a theory of the
underlying mechanisms of STM not only to explain the
properties of STM, but also to explain how STM helps us interact
with the world and accomplish our goals.
8. • This emphasis on the active and structural aspects of STM
began with the work of Miller, Galanter, and Pribram (1960).
• They called STM "working memory “ to emphasize that it serves
as our support system for doing cognitive work, such as
reasoning, listening, or making decisions.
• Great progress in this effort to replace the static model of STM
with a more process-oriented model of working memory was
made by Baddeley and Hitch.
• Their model of working memory is composed of the four
subsystems :
12. Phenomena Explained by
Working Memory
• The following applications of the WM model illustrate how the
four components of working memory function to explain three
typical findings associated with STM:
Phonological
confusions
Word-length
effect
Irrelevant
speech effect
13. Phonological Confusions
Phonological confusions occur when people try to
remember lists of words or sentences and find that their
memory is worse for items that sound alike than for items
that sound different.
As a result, the person trying to remember a series of words
or letters that sound alike will be judged to have a smaller
STM span than a person trying to remember a sequence
that does not sound alike.
14. Word-Length Effect
when you try to memorize vocabulary in a foreign language, the
long words are more difficult to remember than the short ones.
This phenomenon is termed the word-length effect.
STM span decreases as the length of words to be memorized
increases.
How does working memory explain this effect?
Words with more syllables increase the number of sounds the
articulatory control process must rehearse. Notice that long
words not only have more syllables than short ones, they take
longer to pronounce.
Working memory shows that the speed of articulation is the key
to the capacity of short-term memory.
15. Irrelevant Speech Effect
• The ability of inconsequential background speech to interfere
with silent verbal rehearsal is called the irrelevant speech
effect.
• It can occur even when the language being spoken is different
from the language of the text you are reading.
• This is because the speech sounds from the irrelevant speech
enter the phonological loop and are added to the sounds
associated with the words that you are trying to remember
16. When do we use working memory?
Remembering a new telephone number, web address or a
vehicle registration number while we are trying to find a pen
and paper to write it down or to use it in some other way.
Following spoken directions such as ‘Go straight over at the
roundabout, take the second left and the building is on the right
opposite the church.
Calculating how much the bill will be at the supermarket
checkout for the items we have in our basket.
Measuring and combining the correct amounts of ingredients
when you have just read the recipe but are no longer looking at
the pages.
17. Are there limits to working
memory?
Here are some of the situations that often lead to the loss of
information from working memory.
Distraction
Trying to hold in mind
too much information
Engaging in a
demanding task
18. Does working memory capacity
vary between people?
• There is a personal limit to working memory, with each
individual having a relatively fixed capacity that may be greater
or less than that of others . So, a particular activity may be well
within the capacity of one person but exceed that of another.
• Working memory capacity also increases with age during
childhood. Young children typically have very small capacities
that increase gradually until the teenage years.
19. WM is crucial to many learning activities in the classroom,
because learners often have to hold information in mind
while engaged in an effortful activity.
Learners with small working memory capacities will struggle
in these activities, simply because they are unable to hold in
mind sufficient information to allow them to complete the
task.
Losing crucial information from working memory will cause
them to forget many things.
Because learners with small working memory capacity fail in
many different activities on many occasions, they will
struggle to achieve normal rates of learning and will make
poor general academic progress.
Why is working memory so crucial for learning?
20. • The cognitive sciences and the neurosciences, made an
argument for the treatment of L2 working memory as a
construct that contributes independently to the learning
process.
• Working memory is a multicomponent system. The system has
been demonstrated in psychological studies to undergo
considerable growth from childhood through early adolescence
,there is also growth in L2 working memory.
• It is far more likely that growth occurs as a result of increased
efficiency in the strategies carried out by working memory over
time.
• As these strategies compete with each other to construct
meaning out of received input, they lead to changes in the
interlanguage and in L2 working memory itself.
• It is through this competitive process that acquisition of
language occurs over time.
21. Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by
it's ability to climb a tree, it will live it's whole
life believing that it is stupid.
-Albert Einstein