Working Memory or Short Term Memory (depends on what base was developed the theory: neuroscience /connectionist theory or computer model). We learned that WM is of small capacity: Miller's magic number 7+/-2; and that is "short" in time in the range of seconds.
For some reason each generation of EPFR515 students have the tendency to think that one can modify the characteristics of working memory. That we could expand it (like you blow into a baloon), that we can hold in there information for let's say a couple of days, weeks.... which is not true at all!
The working memory is the water in the faucet in your kitchen, water goes through it when you open it. The long term memory is the water reservoir, water stays in there for as long as one keeps it there. One can draw water from the reservoir (LTM) when needed. But the water runs through the faucet, is moving (WM). Be it a bathroom, kitchen faucet, or be it the fire fighters' hose no matter the quantity of liquid that goes through (remember perceptual processing?) is GOES does not stay and that's why Baddeley named it working.
I like Alan Baddeley's model. It gives a very nice pictorial explanation to my students. From this model they can relate different classroom applications of the working memory theory.
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The above model is Alan Baddeley's (2000) revised working memory model. LTM = long-term memory. From "The Episodic Buffer: A New Component of Working Memory?" by A.D. Baddeley, 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, p. 421.
Robert W.Proctor and Kim-Phuong L.Vu (2003). Human Information Processing: An Overview for Human Computer Interaction. In: J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. Lawrence Erlbaum
1 comment:
Thinking that working memory can be expanded is futile, as you said, just as it would be futile to expand the faucet with the hopes of "holding" the water in it for a longer period of time. Working memory is just that: working! There is no storage at all!
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