Working Memory

Working Memory

Working Memory

Shenita Jefferson

PS200-Professor Adamson

01/01/2013

Working Memory

Michael is a 52 year old doctor who is concerned that he is having memory problems. His wife asked him to stop by the grocery stop and in addition she gave him a list of items to buy from the store. He not only forgot about the items he also forgot to stop at the store. Michael also mentioned he attended a continuing education seminar for his job and he mentioned he had hard time focusing and paying attention. He said he could only remember important information not much of the details. Michael went on to explain that he has been stressed due to some organization changes in his department. He fears that he would lose his job and in addition he has been working long hours, so now his wife is threatening to divorce him.

The human brain can hold a certain number of items of new information in at once which is called limited capacity. Short term memory can only hold up to four pieces of information simultaneously. (p.8)

When we think about the amount information factor that are relevant to that are the length of each unit of information, difficulty in coding, and issues of forgetting. Michael’s issue of forgetting has something to the amount of information that he is remembering and forgetting. Michael has so much going on in both his personal life and works that he not able focus. As mentioned in the chapter, even though we want our brans to multi-task, our brains are not capable of multi-tasking. The brain is going back and forth between two tasks. When the attention is divided between two tasks, time is lost. (p.13) I think Michael’s brain was feeling overloaded with the new information that he easily forgot or just remember part of the information. WM=STM+Attention is a great formula. Michael is so stressed with what’s going on with his job. As mentioned in the chapter if too much attention is required to understand a difficult new concept then very...