Working Memory is a mixture of Short Term Memory, and the organization of stimuli. It has many important implications, especially for children learning at the early ages. In the Article, The Connection Between Working Memory and School Success, Heather Lovell, speaks about the problems children can have while learning. Citing the work of Dr. David Rabiner from Duke University, she shows that working memory is very important to students’ progress::
“So what is working memory and why is it so important for school? Working memory allows you to hold several pieces of information in your brain and manipulate them to be used. This would include parts of multi-step directions, numbers in a word problem, and the paragraph you just finished reading. Therefore, working memory is extremely important in a school setting and often students who struggle in school or have been diagnosed with ADHD have weaker working memories”. (Lovell, Refer to: http://www.ourcoloradonews.com/education/academic/the-connection-between-working-memory-and- school-success/article_0403a77c-f85d-11e1-b2d7-001a4bcf887a.html)
Working Memory is also very important when considering the effects of sleep deprivation. According to many sleep deprivation studies for soldiers, working memory while still functioning, seems to filter differently and with it, the changeover to long term memory loses its accuracy, because the person who needs sleep, does less filtering and attending, before cognition. While not as true for auditory information, Visual Working Memory, VWM, seems to have drastic changes when sleep deprivation occurs:
“VWM may be particularly important in this fashion, as it is required for almost any cognitive demand involving storing multiple visual stimuli simultaneously or selecting target objects in crowded displays. Thus, to the extent the capacity or filtering components of VWM are impaired by sleep deprivation, this can have significant operational impacts for a wide range of individuals.” (The Effects of Two Types of Sleep Deprivation on Visual Working Memory Capacity and Filtering Efficiency: Refer to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3329471/)
Working memory is way for us to sort and understand stimuli. It can be drastically affected by the amount of learning we already have, and the amount of sleep we get the night before. Thus the effects of working memory are affected by our minds and bodies, and one must understand their frame of mind while experiencing or remembering how we came to a conclusion, for our long term memories. It must be understood, that the factors which shape our working memories attending, are also shaping our memory and reality, daily.
References
The Connection Between Working Memory and School Success, Lovell h, Refer to: http://www.ourcoloradonews.com/education/academic/the-connection-between-working-memory-and-school-success/article_0403a77c-f85d-11e1-b2d7-001a4bcf887a.html
The Effects of Two Types of Sleep Deprivation on Visual Working Memory Capacity and Filtering Efficiency: Refer to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3329471/