Adult Working Memory

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Working memory is a system for temporarily storing and managing the information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension. At all stages of life there is some level of a limit on our working memories. Children have the greatest number of limits due to numerous factors: including attention span and brain maturation. Adults have their own limits due to a multitude of the same reasons. There are multiple reasons behind adults limits of working memory. One being their memory span. That is the longest list of items that can be repeated back with a large percentage of correctness. When someone is trying to encode, store, and retrieve several chunks of information it can become difficult when it’s …show more content…

Their attention span is shorter, they are unable to use key elements like repetition without help, and they can’t hold on to a multitude of “chunks”. It mainly comes back to that their brains are not fully developed. This makes it exceedingly difficult for them to learn how to read because reading uses what little working memory they have. The auditory portion of working memory helps children understand the sounds letters make. This helps with the sounding out of other words that aren’t being spoken to them. The visual portion of working memory helps with remembering what the words and letters look like. This helps with recognition later on of other words. Learning and adapting to these helpful parts of their memory assist children’s understanding tremendously. Nevertheless, their short attention span and still growing brain makes reading a challenge. We read to understand. We read because of our working memory. When our working memory is restricted, our understanding of information becomes arduous. A strong working memory results in faster identification of terms and faster processing of the information. Reading happens with less hesitation which allows for more time and focus to be spent on the understanding portion. When we aren’t paying attention, fast at comprehension, or able to hold all the information, understanding is the last thing that will be happening. You have to be good at all other tasks in order to