What is Working Memory? Can it Be Trained?

You have prob­a­bly noticed the increas­ing amount of research and media cov­er­age focused on “work­ing mem­o­ry”. What is work­ing mem­o­ry? Why do we care? How can we best enhance it?

Work­ing mem­o­ry is the abil­i­ty to keep infor­ma­tion cur­rent in mind for a short peri­od, while using this infor­ma­tion for the task at hand. Work­ing mem­o­ry is sup­port­ed by regions of the frontal lobes (in blue here) and pari­etal lobes (in yellow).

Let’s take a few con­crete exam­ples to under­stand in which sit­u­a­tions work­ing mem­o­ry is used.

Sit­u­a­tion 1: You are just back from your cof­fee break and your col­league, who is run­ning in the hall­way to catch up with the boss, tells you that Mr. Brown just called and can see you either on the 18^th at 2:30pm or on the 20^th at 9am. Your brain holds on to that infor­ma­tion long enough so you can run to your office, fran­ti­cal­ly look for a pen and a piece of paper and even­tu­al­ly write it down. This is a per­fect exam­ple of suc­cess­ful work­ing mem­o­ry. This brain func­tion allows us to hold infor­ma­tion in mind while we need it to accom­plish a task.

Sit­u­a­tion 2: You are talk­ing with your finan­cial advi­sor about your port­fo­lio. He keeps throw­ing num­bers and per­cent­ages at you. You try to fig­ure out whether fund X (5% return, 5.75% ser­vice fees upfront but no fee when you sell) is bet­ter for you than fund Y (4% return, no upfront fees, fees when you sell that decrease over the years). You try hard for a while to do some men­tal math and fig­ure out the big pic­ture, then your men­tal screen goes blank and you feel utter­ly con­fused. This is a per­fect exam­ple of work­ing mem­o­ry overload!

How can I assess my work­ing mem­o­ry abil­i­ty? Does this abil­i­ty mat­ter for my every­day life, at work, school or home? Can work­ing mem­o­ry be trained? To help you find answers to these ques­tions and oth­ers we have pre­pared this Q & A: Enjoy!

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Q: What is the impact of work­ing mem­o­ry abil­i­ty on every­day life?

A: Learn more about the role of work­ing mem­o­ry in every­day life in Why work­ing mem­o­ry mat­ters in the knowl­edge age: study

Q: Do chil­dren with high­er work­ing mem­o­ry per­for­mance do bet­ter at school?

A: Work­ing mem­o­ry may in fact be a bet­ter pre­dic­tor of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess than IQ

A: 10% Stu­dents may have work­ing mem­o­ry prob­lems: Why does it matter?

Q: How much does my work­ing mem­o­ry abil­i­ty affect how I think?

A: A lot! To fig­ure it out  Try Think­ing and Learn­ing With­out Work­ing Memory

Q. Can work­ing mem­o­ry be trained?

A: Yes. For instance, one study shows that flu­id intel­li­gence can be improved thanks to work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing. Learn more by read­ing this inter­view with the author of the study.

Q: Can work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing help chil­dren with ADHD?

A: In this inter­view, Dr. Kling­berg explains how many stud­ies have shown that train­ing work­ing mem­ory is pos­si­ble and that such train­ing improves rea­son­ing abil­ity over­all and helps peo­ple with atten­tion deficits.