I know my working memory is rubbish, because of the examples I gave in my Spelling post, and I cannot play the game ‘Answer the previous question’. If I was asked a series of questions and was required to not answer the first question until after the second question had been asked (and so on), I would fail after only one question – two if I’m lucky.
I also made a hopeless barmaid at college, because if someone wanted more than three drinks, I’d have to ask them again what the first one was.
Most people who don’t have learning disabilities can remember a substantial number of things at once, because they have automatised other tasks. However, people with learning disabilities haven’t automatised other tasks, such as reading, or hearing a sequence of numbers, so they are busy using up their working memory in order to simply process the information they are being given.
This means that there is very little available working memory left. I think of it as like using an overdraft! (something I can relate to!) I was wrong to say I have a ‘small working memory’ yesterday. I actually have the same working memory as most people, but it is being used to process information that should be automatised, so has a smaller available balance!
I once shared reading a book with a classmate, and she was finishing each page long before I was. So I asked her to read aloud at the same speed she was reading in her head, as I thought she was skipping some of the lines. Her response was that she was reading all the words, but at a much faster rate than she could speak (because it was automatised). I thought she was lying! Even now when I read, I imagine saying each word aloud.
See further information on working memory at:
http://www.learnplus.com/guides/learning-sys-memo.html
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/working-memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory
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