Draw the let­ter J on your men­tal sketch­pad. Now draw the let­ter D. Turn it 90 degrees to the left and put it in top of the J. What does this shape resemble?

An umbrella, of course! You’ve just used your work­ing mem­ory. Our work­ing mem­ory is a cru­cial part of the mem­ory sys­tem, not least because it helps us to fig­ure things out mentally.

Tem­po­rary work­space
Not only can we store infor­ma­tion in our short-term mem­ory, but we can also manip­u­late it. This is why short-term mem­ory is some­times also called work­ing mem­ory. Work­ing mem­ory is our tem­po­rary work­space. We use it in every­day tasks rang­ing from dri­ving (where you need to keep in mind the loca­tion of the cars around you as you nav­i­gate through traf­fic), to prepar­ing a bud­get (where you need to keep in mind one spend­ing cat­e­gory while work­ing on another), to writ­ing a let­ter (where you need to keep in mind all you want to say while devel­op­ing each point a sen­tence at a time).

Active Think­ing
Increas­ing or main­tain­ing one’s work­ing mem­ory abil­ity has enor­mous ben­e­fits in life. It could be com­pared to boost­ing the pro­cess­ing capac­ity of a com­puter. Work­ing mem­ory is where you do your active think­ing and prob­lem solv­ing.  So, a well func­tion­ing work­ing mem­ory is key to suc­cess­fully com­plet­ing many com­plex activ­i­ties that require to rea­son, under­stand and learn. Try the exer­cises oppo­site to use your men­tal work­space in dif­fer­ent situations.

Did You Know: Work­ing Mem­ory vs IQ
Exer­cise Your Work­ing Memory

Chil­dren at school need their work­ing mem­ory for var­i­ous things, such as when doing maths, analysing infor­ma­tion, or even when writ­ing down home­work instruc­tions. Research shows that work­ing mem­ory scores at age 5, rather than ID scores, are a bet­ter indi­ca­tor of aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment when older (at age 11). This is good news, as work­ing mem­ory can be mea­sured more eas­ily and can also be improved.

1. Men­tal Rota­tion
When try­ing to find the right jig­saw puz­zle piece, you often men­tally rotate the ones you see on the table to “see” in your work­ing men­tal space whether they would fit. Let’s prac­tice men­tal rota­tion here. In each box to the left, study each part of the top fig­ure for 5 sec­onds. The cover it up and cir­cle the fig­ure in the bot­tom part that matched it. You will have to men­tally rotate the fig­ures to find the answer.

(Solu­tions below)

2. Back­ward spelling
You are com­pil­ing a school quiz and one of the ques­tions involves spelling sev­eral words back­ward. Before ask­ing the pupils to take part, you decide to try it your­self. Work on one word at a time. Read the word once, then cover it up and spell it backward.

- This is an Excerpt from Max Your Mem­ory (DK, ©2012), by Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, PhD in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy. Dr. Mich­e­lon is an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity, she has writ­ten many sci­en­tific arti­cles, blogs reg­u­larly about brain fit­ness and brain health.

Men­tal Rota­tion: Solu­tions
Box 1: 1st fig­ure on the left
Box 2: 3rd fig­ure on the right
Box 3: 3rd fig­ure on the right

–> Click here to enjoy many more brain teasers and games for kids and adults alike.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

•