Working Memory
Working memory is the brain's real-time processing system, responsible for holding and manipulating new information as it's encountered. It has a hard capacity ceiling — approximately five to nine items, or more precisely around four chunks — held for roughly fourteen to thirty seconds before decay. It's the bottleneck every workshop design either respects or fights.
Tagged
Related Terms
- Long-Term Memory
- Long-term memory is the brain's durable storage system, holding information beyond the roughly 30-second window of working memory. Material reaches long-term memory only if it has been encoded well,…
- Chunking
- Chunking is the process of grouping individual items of information into larger, meaningful units so that working memory can hold more of the underlying material. An expert can hold the same amount of…
- The Phonological Loop
- The phonological loop is the working-memory subsystem that holds and manipulates verbal and auditory information — spoken words, heard words, inner speech, and sub-vocalized rehearsal. Identified by…
- The Visuospatial Sketchpad
- The visuospatial sketchpad is the working-memory subsystem that holds and manipulates visual and spatial information — images, diagrams, shapes, spatial relationships, and mental layouts. Identified…
- Encoding
- Encoding is the process by which information moves from working memory into long-term memory, where it can later be retrieved. Encoding quality depends on what the learner *does* with the material —…
Mentioned In
- How People Actually Learn
A workshop can end with glowing feedback and produce almost no behavior change a week later. That's not a motivation problem on the participant's side — it's a memory-science problem on the design…
- Cognitive Load
Cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort a participant's working memory is being asked to carry at any moment during a workshop. Working memory is the brain's real-time processing system,…
- Warm vs. Cold Information
Warm information is material a participant already has some prior knowledge of and can recall when prompted. Cold information is material they have no prior exposure to — or exposure so thin that it…
- The 80/20 Workshop Engagement Ratio
The 80/20 engagement ratio is a session-design principle stating that participants should be actively working with material for approximately 80% of a live session, while the workshop leader guides,…
- The Forgetting Curve in Workshops
The forgetting curve describes the rate at which newly presented information decays from memory when it isn't actively reinforced. In a typical lecture-style workshop, where information is delivered…