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Can a person become a supercomputer? Psychologist Peter Doolittle explains how human working memory, analogous to computer RAM, works, and describes its capabilities, limitations, and strategies for using it.
Operational and long-term
“Working memory is that part of our consciousness that is responsible for the inclusion of consciousness itself at any given time. It cannot be turned off: a person with a disabled working memory is a person in a coma.” Working memory has several important functions. It allows us to keep a momentary impression and a certain amount of knowledge gained. It allows us to access our long-term memory and extract from there what we need at this particular moment. And finally, it combines what we already know with what we have just learned, processes this mixture of information – and uses it to achieve our goal. It is important to understand that the goal in this case is not the desire to become the president or the world champion in surfing. No, we are talking about more specific and prosaic goals: for example, find your way to your hotel room. Our ability to solve everyday problems depends on our working memory, on its ability to absorb what we learn, to search for what we already know – and, by combining this, lead us to an answer.
Pass the tests
- How is your memory structured?
How to evaluate your memory?
The amount of working memory, its ability to assimilate and process information are associated with many positive effects. People with good working memory are excellent storytellers and often have writing talents as well. They are interesting in communication, know how to ask the right questions and easily cope with any standard tests. They are distinguished by the ability to critical thinking and common sense.
Checking the amount of your working memory is easy. Try to remember five words. Well, for example: “tree”, “highway”, “mirror”, “Saturn” and “electrode”. Remember? Fine! Now do three simple tasks. To begin, multiply in your mind 23 by 8. Then count to ten, while bending your fingers. And then list the last five letters of the alphabet, starting from the end. Think it’s easy? Practice shows that most people after that cannot remember even half of the words they memorized. This is normal, there is nothing to worry about. There are people who remember only 2-3 words in such a test. Although there are also those who remember 10.
Checking the amount of your working memory is easy. Try to remember five words.
But the problem is that life happens very quickly, constantly bombarding us with a stream of impressions and information. We need to isolate from this stream what is truly important, what makes sense to us. This is what working memory is for. But she has her limitations – in terms of volume, in terms of the duration of memorization, in terms of the ability to focus. For example, it has been established that we can keep about four things in our heads at the same time. That is, it is generally considered that there are seven, but studies using MRI show that four are still not bad. And even these same four things we can keep in our working memory only 10-20 seconds, no longer. Unless we analyze these things, use them to solve some problem, or discuss them with another person.
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Information processing methods
What happens when we run out of working memory? Well, you, for example, happened to go from one room to another and suddenly stop with the question: why am I going here? Forget the keys at home, forget where the car is in the parking lot, forget to pick up the child from school? This is what happens when there is not enough working memory.
And we must help her. And this requires a strategy for how we assimilate information. The main of these strategies is to analyze everything that happens to us, to comprehend our life. Moreover, this must be done constantly and in real time: not in ten minutes, not tonight, not in a week, but here and now – at the moment when something happens to you.
Thorkel Klinberg
“Overloaded brain. Information flow and limits of working memory”
We can watch a series and do exercises on the simulator at the same time. But driving a car and talking on the phone is much worse for us. The reaction will then slow down by 0,5 seconds. And if we are over 60 years old, then by 1,5 seconds. Why?
When talking to another person, for example, ask questions: Do I agree with him? Haven’t missed something? Is there anything else I should ask him? How can all this be useful to me in life? All this is a way of processing information so that we can use it later when we need it. Reflect on what you have learned, repeat it, write it down, and then go back to your notes. Analyze life. We learn and truly live only when we analyze what is happening. If you don’t analyze your life, you don’t live it.”
The full lecture by Peter Doolittle is available at TED conferences.