Working memory

So we talked last week about executive functioning.

So there's a lot of parts that go into cleaning your room, like working memory, like remembering what you're supposed to do, task initiation, planning, organizing, time management, managing side quests-

Mm-hmm

... all of that sort of stuff.

... all of that information is really hard for you.

Yeah.

So that's actually called your working memory, so that means your ability to take everything I said and hold it.

We talked about this when you did your neuro psych, when they give you the numbers and they say, "Repeat the numbers.

It looks like distraction, but what if a developing brain is actually supposed to explore? New research suggests children's attention may work differently from adults and that their tendency to explore broadly could actually help them learn.

The research focuses on something scientists call working memory.

Think of working memory as your brain's temporary sticky note.

It helps you keep information in mind while you're using it, like remembering what you're doing, what you've already discovered, and what you should ignore.

As adults develop stronger working memory abilities, we become better at filtering information.

Basically, our brain gets pretty good at saying, "That's not important.

Ignore it." Young children aren't quite as good at that filtering yet, and according to psychologist Vladimir Sloutsky, that may actually encourage children to explore most of their surroundings.

Researchers also gave adults a second mental task while they played.

it comes down to how human memory actually functions.

The brain only has a very limited amount of working memory, like the processing power available at any given immediate moment.

Right, like RAM in a computer.

Perfect analogy.

If you were using all of that working memory just to figure out what sounds the letters make, you have zero power left to understand what the sentence actually means.

Oh, wow.

So it is strictly an energy saving strategy.

Oh, because they've lost their place.

What's actually happening when he's absorbed in a task and forgets to grab his wallet?

Working memory overload.

Working memory is the small temporary holding space where the brain keeps things it needs right now.

In ADHD, that space is smaller or it gets disrupted more easily.

When you're deeply absorbed in something, the task fills the entire working memory capacity.

The thought of, I need to grab my wallet before I leave was in there, but it got pushed out, not because he forgot it in the long-term sense.

It was a prospective intention, an item in working memory, and working memory ran out of room.

So it's not a retrieval failure from long-term storage.

It will be impossible.

And what you mentioned and what you underline now as well is it should be an extension of ourself, our brains, and have also a working memory, some kind of metadata that will allow you more context.

And the ISN is the facility through which we are mentioning to do that.

It will allow you to make things a lot easier and then just resume at different points and then avoid the different types of systems that you need to just do by hand.

that allowed you to kind of store all your data for that particular project.

And you could open and close it like a file, but it acted like a folder.

And so it was meant to be a way for you to have working memory of that stuff.

And then the final one was more of a history that was totally stolen from a classic paper in the 90s called Lifestreams.

So I'm going to choose to not act on that impulse and make a better decision for myself now that will benefit me in the future.

And how we really work on these skills with students is understanding that to build executive functioning skills, to have good executive functioning skills, You need a strong nonverbal working memory, which is our visual imagery system, and we need a strong verbal working memory, which is our self-talk system.

And we need the nonverbal and the verbal working memory to work together.

And what this looks like for an adult, I like to say, is I hate cleaning, okay? It is like my most non-preferred task.

I don't like doing it.

And all of that, so teaching kids to visualize, and what we call it is making a mental movie of the future, or we make mental movies of the relevant past.

Maybe the last time we were asked to go quietly into the library, how did that go? We visualize how that all went.

And then the verbal working memory is what we call the brain coach, where we're talking to our brain and we're helping our brain make decisions that will help us in the future.

Yes, so that's actually how it is like with an ADHD person.

So when we talk about ADHD, one of the executive functions is working memory.

A person with ADHD, if you look at memory as a basket, the basket of an ADHD person is very wide but it's shallow oh so that's why if there's information in your mind there's always that thought that you're gonna forget it because it'll easily overflow so that's the reason why they have to like say it I have to say it or sometimes it's all it can also be part of the impulsivity like if it is if the person is like too slow but you already know like what's next oh my god and

I'm like yeah it's

Mm-hmm

... because our working memory is like a mental scratch pad, and with ADHD or any executive functioning weaknesses for whatever reason, it doesn't stay on the mental scratch pad.

It's like I tell you my phone number-

[laughs]

Like, that stays there.

Yeah.

So we have to think about not only attention, so are they attending to us, but when we say it to them, it really doesn't stick because of working memory weaknesses-

Mm-hmm