Working Memory

All of us have times when we forget things or have trouble paying attention at work, school, or at home. Most of us can laugh about it and it does not cause problems in our day-to-day tasks or relationships but for some it does cause problems in their daily lives and in their relationships. What can they do to help them remember and to pay attention. What is causing them to be forgetful and to not be able to pay attention?

Michael is a 52-year-old male he has been having memory problems recently and is worried. He said that his wife has been noticing and complaining that he has become very forgetful lately. He said that the other day his wife gave him a short list of items to pick up from the grocery store, he said that he repeated the items back to her but on his way home from work not only did he forget the items but he also forgot to stop at the store. Michael has also been having trouble paying attention. He attended a conference last week for continuing education credits that are required for his job. He said that during the lecture he struggled to pay attention. He took notes but after when he read them he said they made no sense to him because his attention was wondering. He tried to study the information but after he could only remember some of the new information, but he could just remember the main concepts, not the details.

Michael reports that he has been feeling very anxious lately about his work at the hospital as many changes are going to be made in his department. He is fearful of losing his job and not being able to start his own private practice at his age. He said that because he has been working more hours his wife is upset and that she has been threating divorce.

Memory is the process that is used to acquire, store, retain and later retrieve information. There are three major processes involved in memory which are encoding, storing, and retrieval. In order to form a new memory, information must be changed into a useable...