Summary
- Attention drives information from the Environment into the Working Memory.
- Encoding is the process of moving information from working memory to long-term memory.
Tip
The better we process information in the working memory, the better these information will be encoded into the long term memory: it’s therefore very important to pay clear attention to what you are thinking and processing. This idea might explain why multitasking is not effective: working memory can hold a limited amount of information and if we split it into multiple tasks, the quality of all the tasks we are processing will be degraded and we’ll be encoding low-quality content.
- Retrieval is the process of “decoding” information that were previously encoded to support the new data streamed by the attention: For example from the environment, the phone rang twice. The long term memory might retrieve some known facts such as the knowledge that no one calls me twice unless something is wrong. From this supporting idea, wokring memory might reason around why the phone is ringing twice and who could have phoned.
Why
As previously said, it makes you aware that working memory is very efficient but it comes with a limited storage: You must pay attention and be vigile to what you want your working memory should work on, because if you lose attention on some volatile details, they might be lost forever. Once you get this bit of notion, you can nudge yourself to take the right direction once you notice your mind is wandering again. :)
Credits and References
- Jim Heal & Rebekah Berlin, Mental Models, How understanding the mind can transform the way you work and learn, John Catt Educational, 2025 (9781398369689)