A workout for working memory. People may be able to remember a nearly infinite number of facts, but only a handful of items- -held in working memory- -can be accessed and considered at any given moment. It's the reason why a person might forget to buy an item or two on a mental grocery list, or why most people have difficulty adding together large numbers. In fact, working memory could be the basis for general intelligence and reasoning: Those who can hold many items in their mind may be well equipped to consider different angles of a complex problem simultaneously. If psychologists could help people expand their working- memory capacity or make it function more efficiently, everyone could benefit, from chess masters to learning- disabled children, says Torkel Klingberg, MD, Ph. D, an assistant cognitive neuroscience professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Children with attention- deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), for example, might especially benefit from working- memory training, says Rosemary Tannock, Ph. D, a psychologist and psychiatry professor at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Working- memory deficits might also underpin some reading disabilities, as it controls the ability to recall words read earlier in a sentence, says Tannock. But how- -or even if- -working memory can be expanded through training remains a topic of hot contention among psychologists. Some argue that working memory has a set limit of about four items, and that individual differences in working memory arise from the ability to group small bits of information into larger chunks. However, new research suggests that working- memory capacity could expand with practice- -a finding that could shed new light on this central part of the mind's architecture, as well as potentially lead to treatments for ADHD or other learning disabilities. Functional limitations. One such study- -by researchers at Syracuse University- -hit upon the potential trainability while attempting to resolve a debate in the literature on the limits of working memory. Since the 1. 95. 0s, psychologists have found one aspect of working memory- -sometimes referred to as the focus of attention- -to have severe limitations. For example, George Miller, Ph. D- -a founder of cognitive psychology and a psychology professor at Princeton University- -established that people generally can't recall lists of numbers more than seven digits long. Those who exceeded that limit tended to make smaller groups of numbers into larger ones, using a process called . The downward revision results from new techniques to keep people from chunking information, which can create the illusion of greater fundamental storage capacity, says Nelson Cowan, Ph. D, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri- Columbia. In one common chunking- prevention method, participants repeat meaningless phrases over and over while performing working memory tasks such as memorizing lists of numbers. A recent literature review by Cowan, published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Vol.
Other researchers have suggested that working- memory capacity is limited even further- -to just a single item. In a study by Brian Mc. Elree, Ph. D, a psychology professor at New York University, participants underwent a test of working memory called . In the easiest version of the task, the computer presents a new digit, and then prompts participants to recall what number immediately preceded the current one. More difficult versions might ask participants to recall what number appeared two, three or four digits ago. Mc. Elree found that participants recalled the immediately preceding numbers in a fraction of the time it took them to recall numbers presented more than one number ago- -a finding published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition (Vol. Perhaps practice improves the process of attaching a position to a number, freeing up the mind to recall up to four numbers, he notes. Some researchers believe the practice effect uncovered by Verhaeghen reflects more efficient information encoding rather than expanded working- memory capacity. According to Mc. Elree, the response time measures used by Verhaeghen do not provide pure measures of memory- retrieval speed, and the changes in response time with practice could indicate that participants in his study simply became more practiced at encoding numbers vividly, he says. Gains in memory seen at 5-year mark appeared to drop off over the next five years, but progress in reasoning ability, processing speed persisted 10 years after training. Your Memory Training Boot Camp. For everyday use, the memory palace is helpful for remembering a list or sequence of things. Learn methods to improve your memory and how to improve your memory when studying with Powerbrain’s memory training course and study skills course.If Verhaeghen's findings can be replicated using other tasks, it could change how scientists conceptualize working- memory limitations. Rather than there being a set limitation, working- memory capacity could improve through practice- -suggesting that those with working- memory problems could improve their capacities through repetition. However, practice would need to occur on a task- by- task basis, says Verhaeghen, and, as he points out, . The other half completed tasks that did not get harder as the children became better at them. Both groups of children- -who were 7 to 1. The children who practiced with increasingly difficult memory tasks performed better on two working memory tests- -which were different than the practice tasks- -than the control group, reported Klingberg in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Vol. In addition, the parents of children with memory training reported a reduction in their children's hyperactivity and inattention three months after the intervention, while the parents of the control group participants did not. Subsequent, yet- unpublished experiments build on those results, Klingberg says. And, in the end, the milk gets bought and the reading assignment finished. Memroy Training Programs, High Quality Memory Training Programs. Memroy Training Programs provide top listings of institutes and organizations that bring memory training programs for helping people making their memory sharp. If you want to increase your memory strength too, find best memory training programs here.
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