clair073

In the previous post, Decision-making 101, I provided evidence that selective attention to items that were retrieved into working memory were a major factor in making good decisions. This has generally unrecognized educational significance. Rarely is instructional material packaged with foreknowledge of how it can be optimized in terms of reducing the working memory cognitive load. New research from a cognitive neuroscience group in the U.K. is demonstrating the particular importance this has for learning how to correctly categorize new learning material. They show that learning is more effective when the instruction is optimized ("idealized" in their terminology). Decisions often require categorizing novel stimuli, such as normal/abnormal, friend/foe, helpful/harmful, right/wrong or even assignment to one of multiple category options. Teaching students how to make correct category assignments is typically based on showing them examples for each category. Categorization issue...

Working memory refers to the memory you can consciously hold in your mind at any one instant — such as a phone number you just looked up. Most people can only hold about four totally independent items in their working memory. Working memory relates to intelligence. The reason is that thinking involves streaming into the brain’s “thought engine” chunks of information held in working memory. The working memory streams in, much like a Web video streams into your computer. The more you can hold in working memory, the more information the brain has to think with — that is, the smarter it can be. IQ is not fixed. It improves dramatically in the early school years in all children. Moreover, a recent study shows that both verbal and non-verbal IQ can change (for better or worse) in teenagers. Educators have known for some time that it is possible to train ADHD children to have better working memories, and in the process improve their school performance. The idea that working memory capacity mi...