Understanding Working Memory

Causes, Impact, and Treatment Approaches

Our working memory is a cognitive system that temporarily holds and manipulates information necessary for complex cognitive tasks. Unlike long-term memory, which stores information for extended periods, working memory serves as a mental workspace where information is actively processed for immediate use in activities such as reasoning, comprehension, and learning.

What is Working Memory?

Working memory functions as a temporary storage and processing system that allows us to hold information in mind while using it. It plays a crucial role in numerous cognitive activities including learning, problem-solving, decision-making, and following instructions. Working memory consists of several components that work together: the phonological loop (handling speech-based information), the visuospatial sketchpad (processing visual and spatial information), the episodic buffer (integrating information), and the central executive (coordinating these processes).

Possible Causes of Working Memory Difficulties

Working memory difficulties can often be associated with a variety of issues:

Neurodevelopmental conditions: Working memory challenges can often impact sufferers of ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and specific learning disabilities.
Neurological conditions: Working memory can be impaired by traumatic brain injury, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Genetic factors: Working memory capacity seems to have important genetic foundations according to current research.
Age-related decline: The human capacity for working memory reaches its highest performance level during early adulthood before starting to reduce with increasing age.
Mental health conditions: The working memory performances of individuals can show deterioration in individuals with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sleep deprivation: working memory function can be substantially impaired by inadequate sleep.
Stress and cognitive load: Working memory capacity can be reduced by excessive stress and mental demands.

Who Is More Susceptible to Working Memory Difficulties?

Certain populations are more likely to experience working memory challenges:

Individuals with ADHD, with estimates suggesting 80-85% demonstrate working memory deficits
People with learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia and dyscalculia
Older adults, as part of normal cognitive aging
Individuals who have experienced traumatic brain injury
Those with anxiety disorders or depression
Children with developmental delays

Can Trauma Impact Working Memory?

Trauma can significantly impact working memory through several mechanisms:

Psychological trauma activates stress response systems, leading to elevated cortisol levels that can damage the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex—regions critical for working memory. Those with PTSD often demonstrate reduced working memory capacity, particularly when processing trauma-related information. Intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance associated with trauma can consume working memory resources, leaving fewer cognitive resources available for other tasks.

Childhood trauma appears particularly detrimental to working memory development, as it occurs during critical periods of brain development. Research has found that adverse childhood experiences create physiological effects that reduce working memory capacity throughout adulthood.

Recognising Working Memory Issues

Working memory issues often manifest in various ways:

Everyday life:

Forgetting instructions after hearing them.
Difficulty following multi-step directions.
Losing track during conversations
Struggling to perform mental arithmetic
Difficulty completing tasks that require holding information in mind
Needing to re-read text multiple times to comprehend it

In academic or work settings:

Trouble taking notes while listening
Difficulty organising thoughts when writing
Struggling with mathematical problem-solving
Poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding skills
Challenges with planning and organising tasks

How Working Memory Difficulties Affect Children

Working memory problems in children create major hurdles for their developmental growth along with their ability to succeed academically:

Academic difficulties: Children may struggle with reading comprehension, mathematics, following instructions, and completing assignments.
Behavioural challenges: People will start showing signs of frustration as well as escape behaviours during situations that demand significant working memory capacity.
Social difficulties: Challenges following conversations or remembering social rules can affect peer relationships.
Reduced academic confidence: Repeated struggles may lead to lower self-efficacy and motivation.
Misinterpretation as behaviour problems: Working memory difficulties often lead to misunderstandings that someone is not paying attention, refusing to comply with instructions, or trying hard enough.

When children do not receive proper support, developmental difficulties tend to grow bigger over time, which can spark achievement gaps and reduce educational opportunities.

How Working Memory Difficulties Affect Adults

In adults, working memory challenges can impact various life domains:

Workplace performance: The performance of the worker becomes negatively impacted by challenges in organisational skills, as well as the ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously, and the capacity to follow complex directions.
Daily functioning: Household administration, financial planning, and appointment management become harder to deal with.
Relationships: Forgetting conversations or commitments can strain personal relationships.
Mental health: Ongoing struggles may contribute to stress, anxiety, and reduced self-esteem.
Educational barriers: Working memory limitations can make continuing education more difficult.

Adults may develop coping strategies, but these may be insufficient when working memory demands are high or during periods of stress or fatigue.

Treatment and Intervention Approaches

Several approaches can help address working memory difficulties:

Working memory training programs: Computerised training programs like Cogmed and N-back tasks show some benefits, although the generalisation of untrained tasks remains debated.
Cognitive-behavioural strategies: Teaching metacognitive strategies and organisation skills helps individuals manage working memory limitations.
Environmental: Reducing distractions, breaking down tasks into smaller steps, and providing visual supports can reduce the demand on working memory.
Assistive technology: Note-taking apps, digital recorders, and reminder systems can externalise memory demands.
Pharmaceutical interventions: For conditions like ADHD, medications may improve working memory functioning as a broader effect.
Physical exercise: Regular physical activities such as aerobic exercise can help improve working memory function.
Mindfulness and stress reduction: Engaging in some of these practices can help to improve working memory by reducing stress and improving inattention control.

Impact on Therapy and Treatment Approaches

Working limitations necessitate adaptations in therapeutic approaches:

Session structure: In some cases, the therapeutic sessions have a better impact when patients receive sessions that are shorter and spaced close together.
Information presentation: The delivery of essential information must occur repeatedly with strong clarity using various methods of presentation.
Written supplements: Providing written summaries of therapeutic content can enhance retention.
Skills practice: The effectiveness of practice comes from frequent sessions that are shorter in duration rather than from fewer but longer practice sessions.
Trauma-informed approaches: The therapeutic process will benefit from starting with emotional dysregulation treatments for clients with trauma backgrounds.
Feedback methods: Immediate, specific feedback helps compensate for working memory difficulties.

Therapists need to recognise working memory limitations among clients since these problems result in reduced memory capacity for therapeutic strategies which needs additional support through sessions.

References

Baddeley, A. D. (2012). Working memory: Theories, models, and controversies. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 1-29.
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135-168.
Holmes, J., & Gathercole, S. E. (2014). Taking working memory training from the laboratory into schools. Educational Psychology, 34(4), 440-450.
Moriguchi, Y., & Hiraki, K. (2013). Prefrontal cortex and executive function in young children: A review of NIRS studies. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 867.
Schweizer, S., & Dalgleish, T. (2016). The impact of affective contexts on working memory capacity in healthy populations and in individuals with PTSD. Emotion, 16(1), 16-23.
Scott, J. C., Matt, G. E., Wrocklage, K. M., Crnich, C., Jordan, J., Southwick, S. M., Krystal, J. H., & Schweinsburg, B. C. (2015). A quantitative meta-analysis of neurocognitive functioning in posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 141(1), 105-140.
Shipstead, Z., Redick, T. S., & Engle, R. W. (2012). Is working memory training effective? Psychological Bulletin, 138(4), 628-654.