I only had working memory as a small part of an introductory course, but I think that a meaningful sentence works better than an abstract code. It's called chunking: you can remember about 5 to 7 different chunks of information. The bigger chunks, the more information you can remember.

So the abstract code has you remember four different numbers while you can probably remember the sentence as one whole (at the very most as two pieces of information: "call mom" and "4pm").

Or let me use the example I got from the textbook, which has twelve letters to remember: N F L C B S M T V. You can read that as twelve letters or as four chunks: NFL CBS HBO MTV. And it can help if you give those chunks as much information as possible: if you can make one chunk contain about seven chunks of information (by association) you can use your working memory as a branching tree.

This is of course all from memory with little knowledge of the details, but I think this should give about the right insight on working memory. Improving working memory would be brilliant, but strategies you used in high school to remember information are much, much more efficient.

Hey Noël, wow, that's really cool. Really cool. Huh... if you compress more information into a chunk, then you can remember more things in one go. Great stuff, cheers.

Obligatory cautionary note:
> http://gwern.net/N-back FAQ.html#n-back-in-general

I guess a good analogy for working memory would be computer RAM memory.
The trick is to learn to discard from our RAMs any data that is not useful in the present moment.
I wish my MacBook Pro was smarter a discarding unused RAM so I wouldn't have to type "purge" in Terminal so often.
As humans we have to get better at "purging" our RAMs of impractical thoughts and data. I can see how that would help focusing at the task at hand a lot more effectively.
Cheers Strat, Looking forward to beers tonight! Summify rocks!

Hi Sebastian,
I've learn a lot about working memory through being dyslexic. I'm going to admit, upfront that I don't have references, but I learnt this from an educational psychologist (http://www.workingwithdyslexia.com/), so I trust the information!

In the majority of the population working memory correlates really closely with other measures of intelligence. As Noel said, working memory is the ability to remember chunks of information and manipulate them. An example of the difference between remembering a list and a piece of information can be given with phone numbers. My parents phone number is 274258, I can say that number quickly and easily. But I have it as a single thing, I couldn't rearrange that number without writing it down and looking at it - that would require working memory.

In dyslexic people working memory is much worse than other measures of intelligence. I find it really hard to reorganise strings of things. One way I find this particularly difficult is in remembering sequences. I can't tell a joke to save my life - holding the whole sequence in my head at once doesn't work. From my perspective, I would say working memory isn't the thing to always strive for though. I have learnt to really use my long term memory and group data into clusters. These skills have been invaluable to me, it allows me to think about information in interesting ways. The other exciting thing is that dyslexics tend to be good at tangents: thinking about things in usual or new ways. A great example of this is the surreal, tangential humour of Eddie Izzard (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAOLOGGftTY).

I guess my summary would be that working memory isn't everything!

Thanks for your blog, I really enjoy it.
Kate

> A great example of this is the surreal, tangential humour of Eddie Izzard (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAOLOGGftTY).

"Hitler never played Risk when he has a kid" - rotfl. Oh my goodness, I'm laughing so hard. As someone who likes history and played a lot of Risk that's totally hilarious.

Okay, whew, I'm calming down and slowing down on laughing. Whew, whew. Yeah, rest of your comment has lots of insight in it, this part in particular -

> From my perspective, I would say working memory isn’t the thing to always strive for though. I have learnt to really use my long term memory and group data into clusters. These skills have been invaluable to me, it allows me to think about information in interesting ways.

Interesting to think about. I don't actually know much about the intelligence/memory/neuroplasticity stuff myself. It's nice to hear perspectives from you, Noel, Stefanie Zobus, Phaedrus, Sam Snyder, etc. This seems like an area with a lot of room to pick up lessons and get higher performance/productivity/flow/etc.

Thanks for the good comment. I'm still laughing. "You know, you could never hold on to Asia, that Eastern Europe/Asia... 7 armies a turn, but you can't hold it, you can't hold it..."

Cheers Kate, thanks for the great comment, best wishes.