Ways to imporve working memory

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Any one found a way of imporving your working memory, do memory games work? Possible to bring a severely bad working memory up to normal?

I read this book many years ago and it has greatly improved my own scattered brained mind. It's also very entertaining.

'The Memory Book'
by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas

I can't post links yet but you can look it up on Amazon. It's only 6.99 new.

If I can ask you. What is your work? What do you want to remember?

I read some of Harry Lorrayne's stuff but it was mostly memory tricks which doesn't really help in every day life.

My job is web design, I have a severely low auditory short term memory and very low working memory. A poor working memory effects pretty much everything. If I could improve this, I could really improve my quality of life. But I don't know if this is even possible, but I'd like to try. My visual memory though is very good.

There's a computer program that'll improve your working memory with 20-minute sessions daily, I'll ask my fiancée what it's called, he uses it.

Good question.......I used to worry about my "short-term memory" because I could tell that my thinking was limited by a tendency to lose some of the information before I'd had time to process it. I designed a short-term memory test based on what I've seen on the web - basically I just wrote a computer program that displayed a string of random digits for a few seconds, and the test was to type them in again, in reverse order. I found that I became quite good at the test, and easily managed to retrieve 6 or 7 digits, which I believe is a fairly normal performance.

I found I was speaking the string of digits aloud which seemed to help my scores a lot (auditory memory may be better than memory for stuff that's read silently?). I wonder whether that's the reason why a lot of autistic people use echolalia when you talk to them - to help them to focus on what you've said?

Anyway, I became suspicious that I might not be measuring the right thing - what I was looking for was better performance in the real world, where saying things aloud may not be an option.

Then I read about working memory, which seems to be the same thing as short-term memory except that the test or exercise has a component of interference thrown in - so it's the ability to recall stuff after thinking about something else. Though I could be wrong......I've seen one definition that seems to say that it's just the ability to hold several pieces of information in the mind at the same time. But either way, the simple recalling of digits is obviously a lot easier than most real-life situations where the elements would be more complex.

Web searches for working memory training methods are hindered by a plethora of hits for stuff you have to buy before you try, mostly (I guess) aimed at parents who are so anxious that their kids get a good start in life that they're prepared to pay out a lot of cash without much hope of getting it back if the method fails.

The only scientific thing I've found is this journal reference:

Klingberg T, Forssberg H, Westerberg H (2002), Training of working memory in children with ADHD. J Clin Exp Neuropsych 24:781-791

Apparently Klingberg was the first to develop a training method that worked. If I manage to find the actual paper, I'll post the details of their method, if I can understand them. As it seems to be based on a computer program, if they've given enough detail I might even be able to write a program myself, though my programming skills aren't all that great. No doubt Klingberg's program will be rather expensive by my frugal standards.

I've also often wondered whether there might be some simple mnemonic trick that might be used to help WM. I suspect that, for the ideas I forget, I just haven't pulled them vividly enough into my consciousness for them to endure. One very useful tip I read was that a great many problems are blamed on the memory when they are in fact problems of the attention not having been vivid enough in the first place.

One saving grace.....I often get this problem where I go into a different room to get something, and by the time I get there I've forgotten what I wanted, but if I just calm down for a few moments and ponder, I can usually recall the missing info. It's quite reassuring when that works - it proves that the info was still in there, and that it can still be retrieved.

Hi,

I haven't had the next. I have just wrote a flash application the same, with digit string test, I'm getting results fairly consistent with what i get on other digit span tests and the results i got on the IQ test. However I do vary a lot with how much I can remember, which suggests to me that attention, is playing a large part and many things can effect my ability to focus.

Yeah you can learn to get better at a game, but if nothing improves in your general life, memory wise, I think thats evidence that nothings really changed.

I know that my auditory memory is far worse then my visual memory so i find trying to see the numbers can give me an extra digit. I'm also going to write a version that speaks the numbers to see how it compares. I'll probably make all the tests available at some point. I do wonder also of the validity of these tests because with a digit span of about 4, I should be struggling a hell of a lot more then I actually am.

I think there is a lot of confusion about the difference between working memory and short term memory and a lot of people use the terms interchangeably. On the IQ test, short term memory was measured with a string of numbers and working memory was measure by repeating the numbers in reverse. I believe that working memory is your ability to remember information whilst manipulating it and short-term memory is just remembering it without doing anything to change the information.

Recall is also going to have a lot to do with it, like it may not be that we also don't remember but that we just can't recall it.

I'm really interesting in this topic and how much it would help me and others to find a way to improve working memory, if you come across any other interesting articles in your travels ToughDiamond, lemme know.