Do Working Memory Games Really Work?
Recently I received this email from a school-based teacher who is helping her students prepare for final exams:
I recently switched jobs, and I teach high school (I used to teach early childhood). I am teaching in small groups and supporting students who have learning disabilities and/or ADD/ADHD etc.
In your videos, you’ve mentioned the importance of their working memory, and I understand the value of it. However, when I Google to find some activities to practice working memory with high school students, the ideas are too elementary and wouldn’t work in my small group setting.
Do you have any good ideas/games/activities to help me practice working memory with high school students?
What a great question!! At first glance, it seems pretty straightforward. There must be fun games to help students practice working memory, right?!
Well… sort of. The answer is more complicated than you think, though. And the best way to reveal this complexity is to narrate blow-by-blow what happened next:
The power of teaching students directly about their brain
First, I responded by asking her:
Had she tried teaching ABOUT working memory to her students, to share with them what it is and why it is so important?
I find this is a simple and often overlooked strategy.
Teachers these days (and this includes me, during my middle school teaching days) have been taught that we are the ones responsible for crafting engaging curriculum. Good learning depends on our great teaching!
Sometimes we educators get so caught up in figuring out what we can do to make learning anti-boring and effective for students that we forget to trust that students can often figure this out for themselves, too — when given the right information and strategies, that is!
What is the “right information” students need to better take charge of their own learning?! In my experience, it includes:
An empathetic acknowledgment of the problem they are experiencing (in this case, perhaps, the difficulty),
A small fact, or set of facts, from cognitive science or neuroscience that explains the how of learning and why certain strategies do/don’t work,
An opportunity to think creatively about how to put that science into action in their own learning and lives.
In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, we specialize in breaking the complex science of learning into short “mini-lectures” that teachers, tutors, and coaches can use with students. Each of our eight mini-lectures applies the three characteristics described above and is centered around a skill related to learning and/or executive function.
We believe that students crave learning more about themselves and how their brains tick. So it’s important to teach — not just isolated learning strategies — but also the science behind why those strategies work!
Students are more likely to take charge of their learning in effective ways when they learn about:
retrieval practice
neural pathways
the study senses
the forgetting curve
working memory
and more!
In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, each of these concepts from the science of learning has an associated mini-lecture that educators can use to help students make effective learning choices inside and outside of the classroom. They can each be taught in under 15-minutes, and can easily be embedded into classroom lectures and coaching sessions.
If you haven’t yet learned the Anti-Boring Study Cycle, our most well-known mini-lecture, good news! Instructions for how to teach it to students are available here in our FREE Student Learning Mini-Course.
Did you notice in the list above that we also have a mini-lecture designed to teach students about Working Memory?! It’s a part of our “Overcome Procrastination” module, in which we discuss the power of using a planner, and use working memory as an explanation for why To-Do Lists and calendars help free up our brain to do other, more important learning tasks
But wait. What exactly is working memory?!
For those who don’t know, working memory is the system in the brain that you access whenever you are actively processing information.
That’s my short definition, but there are other definitions on the internet (gotta love Google!) that catch the nuances beautifully, so let’s look at those:
“a cognitive system with limited capacity that can hold information temporarily” (thanks, Wikipedia)
“a skill that allows us to work with information without losing track of what we're doing” (thanks, Understood.org)
“the small amount of information that can be held in an especially accessible state and used in cognitive tasks” (thanks, National Institute of Health)
Each definition emphasizes how limited the capacity of working memory is, in contrast to the larger capacities of short-term and long-term memory.
How limited is working memory, though? Apparently, it can only hold about four to seven “chunks” or “parking spaces” of information at any given time. This is a crucial piece of information that I deliver to students and teachers, because they need to know
The teacher who asked about working memory initially asked for games she might play to help her students practice this system in their brains.
There certainly are people who sell the idea that playing games helps boost working memory’s efficacy and capacity. A quick Internet search reveals companies like BrainHQ and Lumosity, who make money off of the idea that simple computer activities can shift our working memory capacity.
However, I suggest that what might be more valuable for her students is to bypass the idea of games entirely. Instead, learn about the existence of working memory and how it’s an integral part of the way the brain thinks.
Once students have accurate information about the mechanism of memory, they might be more motivated to learn how to harness their working memory to study for final exams (and, hopefully, funnel more information into their short and long-term memories, too!).
Are there games that improve working memory?
Now that we have all that background out of the way, let’s directly address the question about which the teacher initially emailed me — are there games that improve working memory?
Although I have an introductory knowledge of working memory and know how to teach students “the least they need to know” to study and organize effectively, I’m not a trained expert in the science of executive function.
Luckily, there are skilled coaches inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab who are experts on the topic.
I posted her question in the “Chat Lounge” and tagged several members, to see what they might know about working memory games. A JUICY conversation ensued!
First to comment was Susannah Cole, a Student Success Consultant and Trainer, and co-author of the excellent book Flexible Mindsets. Here’s an excerpt of her response:
I find working memory to be a fascinating topic because it’s so complex and has such a huge impact on learning. […] There is quite a bit of research to suggest that games and activities designed to improve working memory are not actually that useful.
Yes, playing the games makes you better at the games, but it doesn’t transfer to other tasks outside the game and won’t actually improve working memory. Our working memory capacity does grow until we are in our early 20’s, but it doesn’t change that much over the course of our lives.
So the best way to support students who have a more limited working memory capacity is to create a toolbox of strategies they can use for different tasks that require a lot of working memory (arguably most subjects in school). […]There are endless strategies to reduce cognitive load that could be helpful depending on the task and the student, but generally, you could look up memory aids for the age of the student you’re working with. Some highlights include things like checklists, to-do lists, ‘cheat sheets’ with steps, visualizing, and graphic organizers.
I love Susannah’s point here! Games haven’t been found to help expand a student’s access to working memory; instead what students really need is (1) to understand what working memory is, and then (2) to choose memory strategies that help reduce their cognitive load and help them think.
“The number one predictor of academic success”
Next up was Crista Hopp, an Executive Function Specialist and founder of Connected Pathways Coaching. She also teachers the Learning Lab’s Executive Function 101 micro-credential:
Like you Susannah, I believe it is more about teaching students about their brain, how it’s working, and what they can do to make life easier. Working memory is said to be the number one predictor of academic success and when we see [all the different brain processes] that connect to working memory, that makes a lot of sense.
Did you catch that?! Working memory is the number one predictor of academic success?! Not IQ but working memory?!
If that’s the case, wouldn’t it make sense for every educator to have at least a basic knowledge of working memory, as well as teach the theory and strategies to students?! Wouldn’t it?! Wouldn’t it?!
If it’s not about games, what should students know about working memory?
The conversation in our chat thread went on. Others chimed in with book recommendations and online resources. I was amazed by the passion and expertise in our Anti-Boring Learning Lab!!
To directly answer the original question, however, I’d like to give the last word to Lindsey Anderson, a recently Certified Anti-Boring Coach who is also currently a school administrator:
Totally agree with everything that’s been said here. For me, there just doesn’t seem to be enough research to support that it’s worthwhile to spend time on working memory training as the transfer to real life tasks just doesn’t seem to be there. It’s about teaching adolescent students what working memory is and strategies to support it (and compensate for any weaknesses they may have).
Got it. Are you sensing the pattern? Students need to know:
theory behind what the mechanism of working memory is and how it helps them learn and get stuff done, and
strategies to support their working memory and to mitigate specific challenges.
In regards to final exam preparation, if I were the teacher who asked the initial question, I would focus on teaching students:
the definition of working memory,
how it relates to short- and long-term memory, and then
help them brainstorm motivating strategies to put all this into action in preparation for final exams.
Perhaps it will be no surprise to you that the above outline is also the outline for the mini-lecture we teach inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, although we also provide visuals and a sample script to use.
The Anti-Boring strategies we share with students include:
Making a one-page final exam plan,
Creating quizzable study tools,
Consolidating notes into mind maps or other graphic organizers
and so much more!!
If you would like to learn to teach students the Anti-Boring mini-lecture about working memory, and a chock-full toolkit of memory strategies, please consider joining the Lab. You are hereby invited!
Click here to find out if the doors are currently open. If so, take advantage of our 3-day FREE trial; I suggest starting with the Overcome Procrastination micro-credential, if you’re interested in working memory.
Let’s continue the conversation…
Somewhere in the midst of all this, I heard back from the teacher who had initially emailed me. She confirmed that she had indeed taught her students the Study Cycle mini-lecture, which she’d learned via the training in our free library. In regards to working memory, she added:
I am noticing that my students need variety and I was hoping to come up wth some activities that I could do with them for them to see how their working memory works (for example, when I worked with younger students, I would teach them the chunk trick- how our brains recall in groups of 3 (when I was teaching them phone numbers).
Aha! After all that, it turns out she didn’t want games exactly, but actually some demonstrations that help students experience the limits of their working memory. I love her example of how the brain remembers groups of three, and I think this could be wonderful to do with her older students, as well.
What about those of you reading this? Do you have any ideas about how to demonstrate working memory with students? I’d love to hear!!
Let’s keep this conversation going! Here are some immediate next actions you can take:
Post below with any additional thoughts you have about how to support students with working memory challenges, and/or how to demonstrate working memory to students.
Chat with me (Gretchen) in-person and in real-time at our next FREE office hours. Sign up here.
Or join the Lab and add to the conversation in the original Working Memory thread.
Can’t wait to continue learning together…
