Chapter 4 Working Memory

1. This chapter went into depth on a working memory approach proposed by Alan Baddely. It consists of the following components, phonological look, visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, and a central executive. I found myself thinking of many examples in my everyday life that fit into each one of these categories. This chapter also described many factors that influence the capacity of our working memory. The chunking strategy, that I use in my classroom often, pronunciation time, and the semantic similarity of items. 

2. When reading about (PI) I thought of previous research that was done with a cross-model task in chapter 3. I think that PI is the reason that participants had trouble with the task of using two different perceptual systems at the same time. They were having trouble learning or recalling new material because old material was getting in the way.

3. I know that this was brought up through discussion, but I am still unsure of the time span that short term or working memory refers to. I think in my head I am thinking it is a longer time period than what it really is. 

4.  When reading about the components to the Working Memory Model I found many parts that can relate to everyday events in the classroom or at home.  We give our students much information each and every day and obviously assess them on it in some way. It is important to know the capacity of working memory as teachers so that we are making sure students are truly benefiting from the content they are taking in and not just loosing it a second later. 

5.  I think the most convincing study from this chapter on memory was the study by Braddely and Hitch. I was surprised by the results that the participants could perform a spatial reasoning task while memorizing a strand of numbers at the same time. That was evidence to make me believe that working memory is not unitary.

6. Working memory is important because it helps us learn the things we need to know to be a well-educated person. The research done on short term memory is crucial for education because it helps teachers understand the best teaching practices to use with students. 

7. I think that students that struggle with attention often fall in the same category of needing help memorizing things. It seems that the two go hand in hand sometimes. When reading the text I am mostly always thinking of my resource kids and how this relates to them. Chunking works best with this group of students.

8. I think that the studies that are being done are a good way to learn more about the complex process of memory, but I think that each and every person will give different results each time.I think that there are differences in our memory processes from one person to the next.