Lesson 5 Question 3

Short Term Memory Overload

Report some testimonies when your short-term memory or that of your students appeared to be
overloaded. What did you do about it?

My first reaction to this question was to write about all of the times I am making dinner while doing another task simultaneously, such as talking on the phone or with my husband. I have found that when I am not paying attention to the task at hand, I often forget where I am in the process. Did I add the salt already? Virtually every time I make chocolate chip cookies I forget how many cups of flour I have already added. This has led to many recipes that weren't the best! Because this is a recurring problem, I devised a very primitive system to help me out. When measuring the flour, I move chocolate chips to correspond to the number of half-cups I have measured out. This way if I am stopped mid-task, or if I simply lose count, I don't have to worry that my cookies are going to be ruined.

Thinking about this type of experience reminded me of times when I was young when I experienced short-term memory overload at birthday parties. My first memory of this took place at Stacey Paul's 9th birthday party. After everyone arrived, we started playing games. One of the games was a memory game. Lots of items were put on a tray and brought out for a few seconds. We were told to study them. At this point I panicked. I couldn't concentrate on any of the objects that I was supposed to be studying. They were then removed and we had to list as many objects as we could. I was only able to list a few items. Others around me listed far more. Needless to say I lost the game. Being a competitive person, I wanted to figure out how to win. When I went home from the party, I discussed the game with my family. They each gave me strategies to improve my chances. The strategies they suggested all were a variation of the same theme-- chunking information together. I tried this strategy often over the next few weeks. The next time I played the game at another birthday party, I did much better. I eventually did win a few times.

Research indicates that people remember no more than 7 new facts—plus or minus 2. (Bruning, 17)  We can expect all people to remember at least 5 new pieces of information. Think of the phone number 356 8294. Can you remember it? Now, add the area code 792. It becomes more difficult, right? Short term memory has a limited capacity. The individual pieces we can remember can be large or small, depending on how much prior experience we have with the information. The answer is to chunk the information. A chunk is a piece of information that can be small or large. The more experience we have with a subject the larger the chunks. A large chunk is possible when we have developed patterns or associations in long term memory that can be tied to items in our short term memory. (Baer)

References:

Book:

Bruning, Roger. Cognitive Psychology and Instruction. Chapters 2-3.

Personal Experiences:

Stacey Paul's birthday party. October 1983.

Websites:

Baer, Phil. Training Tips, Methods & Resources. Computer Training Principles Part 2