What is Working memory?
Tracy Alloway says that "the best way to think of Working memory as the brains post-it note" (1). Putting little things into our mind as if we were to scribbles them down on a piece of paper.
Working memory is when you retain information and then use and apply it later. "Working memory is defined as a system or as a set process, which serves to process and maintain temporary information for use in other cognitive tasks" (Graf, peter, and Nobuo Ohta. Lifespan Development of Human Memory. 2002. 59). An example is remembering to do your homework from when it was given to you.
There are two different kinds of working memory. First is verbal working memory. This helps with remembering spoken instructions, learning languages, and understanding and performing comprehension tasks. The second is visual-spatial working memory. This requires remembering patterns, images, sequences of events, as well as math skills. “Verbal short-term memory is traditionally assessed using tasks that require the participant to recall a sequence of verbal information such as digit span and word span (Alloway, Tracy. How Does Working Memory Work in the Classroom. 2006. 2; 3).”
What is Short-Term Memory?
Short term memory is the rehearsal of something so that you can remember it. An example would be telling yourself over and over, like what your homework is: read page 187-215 then answer question all the odd questions then remembering to do it.
Working memory connects to the use of short term memory because the information that you are trying to forget needs to be stored in the working memory so that you may recall it and apply it later. “The notion of not only retaining items in short term memory and then recalling them, but actually combining for uses in diverse types of complex cognition (Bauer, Patricia, and Lisa Oakes. Short- and Long-Term Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood.2007.127).”