Short-Term Memory and Working Memory

Short-term memory is a space used to store information on a temporary basis, generally from a few seconds to about one minute. New information usually is retained for a shorter period of time than information that you already know.

If no effort is made to store information retained in short-term memory (for example, by repeating it), that information will disappear quickly and within a minute you will forget it.

Traditionally, short-term memory was simply considered a temporary passive storage area for information to be transferred to the long-term memory area.

But recent studies show that temporary storage is not necessarily a passive function, which has led to the new concept of working memory. In addition to temporarily storing information, working memory is able to process information. For example, working memory not only allows us to remember a telephone number, it lets us repeat the digits in reverse order. More than a temporary storage buffer, working memory is also an area we can use to interact with the information stored there.

Specific Examples:

When performing simultaneous translation, interpreters can use their working memory to retain the words they hear, translate them, and then forget them on an ongoing basis.

Your working memory enables you to find missing objects. In order to find something you lost, your memory needs to store an image of the object as well as the places where you have already searched.

Working memory operates continually and requires a constant mental effort. It’s very prone to distraction, which explains why it often fails. That’s why if someone is talking to you or you’re distracted, you may lose your train of thought or forget the telephone number you were just given.

In general, working memory is only able to store five to nine items at a time. Above that, the new items will interfere with items previously stored. That’s why you’re more likely to remember information at the beginning and end of a list

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Since you use your working memory constantly throughout the day, it’s important to keep it in top condition. You can improve it with frequent repetition of specific exercises and use of certain memorization strategies.

1. Organize the information you want to retain into subsets

This strategy involves dividing a set of information into a number of smaller subsets. This makes it easier to increase the amount of information you can store and use in your working memory.
For example, your working memory may have difficulty retaining the telephone number 4-1-8-5-1-6-5-6-7-9, since 10 numbers are involved. It’s much easier if you divide the numbers into subsets: 418, 516, 56, and 79, which only take up four spaces in your working memory. The same approach can be applied to any type of information.

2. Give meaning to the information you want to retain

It’s easier to store bits of information in your memory if there are links between them, or if you can categorize them in some way. Trying to remember the numbers 321, 369, 311 and 383 is quite difficult, but becomes much easier if you remember you’re dealing with four three-digit numbers, each starting with the number 3.