Starting with working memory and jumping on to something else

I am contributing to the discussion this month, but really as a way to go on to another topic that I consider more important. But first, Working Memory:

As teachers, there is one thing about working memory we need to know. It is the answer to a very important question: Can working memory capacity be increased? In our learners? In ourselves?

An important question I say, as important as: “How can I be more appreciated by my peers?” “How can I get a better job?” “How can I be happy in life?” because my question is almost the same question. Working memory has a huge role in everything we do in life, from the more obvious aspects – learning, error prevention, reading – to those less obvious – reasoning, communicative prowess, social aptitude. Adele Diamond says working memory is one of the three critical executive functions (EFs) that work together to shape success in life. To paraphrase:

There is general agreement that there are three core EFs: inhibition (including self-control and interference control), working memory, and cognitive flexibility (closely linked to creativity). From these, higher-order EFs are built such as reasoning, problem-solving, and planning. EFs are skills essential for mental and physical health; success in school and in life; and cognitive, social, and psychological development.

Note she also distinguishes working memory from short-term memory. Short-term memory is just the ability to hold things in memory; working memory involves manipulating those things as well.

So, can working memory capacity be increased? Can we become smarter as a result?

I asked that question at the CT-BRAIN SIG Conference in Tokyo last year and got a frown from our resident expert: Mike Kelland. He did not exactly say “no,” but rather, that researchers are split on the issue. Indeed, that seems to be the case. According to an Association of Psychological Science (APS) article, “For over 100 years, psychologists have argued that general memory ability cannot be improved, that there is little or no generalization of ‘trained’ tasks to ‘untrained’ tasks,” while the same article reports a study that did improve working memory for both trained and untrained tasks. That is good news since working memory capacity is also highly correlated with fluid intelligence. The APS article defines these two abilities as 11

Working memory capacity refers to our ability to keep information either in mind or quickly retrievable, particularly in the presence of distraction. General fluid intelligence is the ability to infer relationships, do complex reasoning, and solve novel problems…

So to recap, the APS study reported that, contrary to a hundred years believing working memory capacity cannot be increased, the APS study found that it can be. That is good news. And if you do a simple Google search, you will find other recent studies making this claim as well. So, since working memory capacity can be increased, that must mean fluid intelligence can also be increased, right? After all, they are “highly correlated.” But, also according to the APS study, not so. They found improvement in working memory had no effect on fluid intelligence.

Wait a minute. What is going on here? Some experts say working memory capacity cannot be increased. Some say it can. Some say working memory includes the manipulation of what is held in mind, some say it is just a different term for short-term memory, and some say the notion is interchangeable with fluid intelligence. Working memory capacity is highly correlated with fluid intelligence, but enhancing the former does not improve the latter. No wonder Mike frowned.

So, I’m confused. Are you confused too? I figure a large part of the problem comes from our inability to agree on what these concepts are. (In her piece, Caroline raises a similar question.) So I wonder. These terms have been around for a long time. So why the drift? And here is where I jump out of this discussion and into another.

When talking about memory, intelligence, and other kinds of processing, there is another perspective we must consider, one I was unaware of a couple of years ago but can’t stop seeing now. It hovers over me like a ghost. This perspective was hammered into me by Spencer Robinson, a brilliant neuroscientist living in Japan. The hammering consisted of only seven words: “So Curtis, show me where they are!”

It was another winter, not long ago. Adam Jenkins, another brain nerd, and I went up to Fukui to spend a few days with Spencer, the only real native speaker neuroscientist we had access to. We had some great discussions, but it was the following one that changed my whole way of thinking.

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