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A Workout For The Brain – Is Working Memory The New IQ?

Working memory is key to learning and not a fixed ability, says Richard Skelton… We have a whole range of abilities that develop during childhood, which enable us to think and learn. For instance, we know that, compared to a nine-year-old, a five-year-old will struggle to remember the details of what she did at the […]

Dr Richard Skelton
by Dr Richard Skelton
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Working memory is key to learning and not a fixed ability, says Richard Skelton…

We have a whole range of abilities that develop during childhood, which enable us to think and learn. For instance, we know that, compared to a nine-year-old, a five-year-old will struggle to remember the details of what she did at the weekend. And we know that a seven-year-old will be less able to remember a series of facts read in a book than a 12-year-old. These are just two types of memory (that neuropsychologists call ‘episodic memory’ and ‘semantic memory’) that naturally develop as children get older. However, the most important ability children develop for learning is their ‘working memory’. If you’re not already familiar with the term, it describes when we hold onto / store information in our head for a short period of time (i.e. seconds) and use or process this information in some way. I guarantee that you’ve used your working memory hundreds, if not thousands, of times today – every time you have read, listened to someone speak, or even had a thought.

Stretching the capacity

For children, working memory is essential to success in activities such as reading and maths; there’s even growing evidence that it’s linked to happiness. Learning, after all, is anything but passive and requires information to be constantly processed. You might be surprised to know that tests of working memory alone can predict children’s National Curriculum achievement more accurately than a full IQ test, leading some researchers and educators to call it ‘the new IQ’. The way in which we use working memory is perhaps most clear when we stretch its capacity. Here’s a classic example of how it can be assessed – remember the numbers: 2, 8, 3, 5, 7. Got that? Now hold on to them, close your eyes and try to say them out loud… backwards.

See how you had to both store and process the information? That’s what we ask children to do in every lesson we teach. We already know who the children with poor working memory are. They are the ones who struggle to follow instructions, who forget what they are doing and can’t think as quickly as the other pupils. Reading, spelling and maths may present particular problems and teachers intuitively support this group of pupils by breaking down tasks, giving them less information to process.

The brain as a muscle

Can we increase children’s working memory capacity? Yes. Until recently, working memory seemed stubborn and unchangeable, but recent advances in our understanding of the human brain have shown otherwise.

As it turns out, the right training, though complex, can lead to improvements. A useful metaphor for understanding how this training works is to think of the brain as a muscle. In the same way as we might strengthen our arms by frequently lifting heavy weights, to increase children’s working memory we need to provide them with a range of targeted activities that actively stretch their capacity in just the right way. In fact, we have long known that the brain changes when we intensively practice a skill – we can actually see that the brains of skilled musicians are roughly 25% larger in certain areas than non-musicians.) We now know that we can improve children’s working memory, and there are more and more ways in which schools are achieving this. While the first demonstrations came from computerised programmes, more recently there have been pioneering advances into developing practical programmes for the classroom – after all, wouldn’t it be great if we could improve the intelligence of every child in our class?

These programmes are being increasingly used around the country and are helping thousands of children to thrive. Beyond training children’s working memory and increasing their capacity to learn, children often feel a renewed sense of confidence in their learning, and teachers are gaining a whole new insight into how children are able to learn. With neuroscientists, psychologists and educationalists continuing to advance our understanding of children’s brain development, how long will it be until a full cognitive curriculum is just another part of the school day?

Dr Richard Skelton is a Child and Educational Psychologist specialising in Neuropsychology. He works extensively with schools, developing practical programmes that raise attainment across the whole school

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