Latest Issue of the MindBrainEd Think Tank + (ISSN 2434-1002) 3 MindBrained Bulletin Think Tank Work Mem Mar 1 2 | Page 6

to improve the working memory capacity of my students, encouraging them to stay
on-task seems much more aligned to the pedagogical aim of creating engaging
materials at the right level of challenge. Of course, this will still favour students with
high working memory capacity, who, if I’ve been successful in my material creation,
will now be super-focused and extract maximum information, and thus show greater
learning gains (and, in fact, Peter himself has published research suggesting high
working memory capacity is correlated with increased learning from multimedia
sources).
Two, this view of working memory capacity suggests that exceeding capacity is not
just about giving students too many things to remember at once, but also giving them
low-priority activities at the same time as high-priority ones. Sometimes one signal
needs as close as it can get to 100% attention. For example, if, as we are giving
instructions, we also ask our students to pass around a handout, we are increasing
the noise around the intended signal. Whereas if, as we give instructions, we also
display them in writing (say via slides on a TV or projector), we reinforce the signal.
This also increases the duration of this signal, allowing low working memory capacity
students to pay repeated attention to it, as needed.
And three, the need to guide attention towards the signal and away from noise
provides another reason why students benefit from knowing what the aim of the
activity is before they start trying to perform it. If they know in advance which
features of the activity they need to attend to, it must surely be easier for them to use
and produce task-relevant information.
My second question is much more of a
speculation—or an area for future research!
Working memory is also associated with
long-term memory. One way of viewing
working memory is as the connection
between attention and long-term memory,
or prior knowledge. Prior knowledge can be
divided into semantic and autobiographical
memory, which are distinct yet interacting knowledge representations. The semantic
component seems to help structure episodic memories by contributing gist
knowledge (for example, a few days after teaching a class, you might not be able to
remember whether an absent student was actually present or not, as although they
were absent on that one occasion, your gist memory of them being part of the class
on seven previous occasions in the last month interferes with the episodic memory of
that day). Your extant knowledge guides what you attend to in your immediate
environment, and this interaction determines learning.
One way of viewing
working memory is as
the connection between
attention and long-term
memory, or prior
knowledge.
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