How can we study the list: Banana Apple Carrot?

There are two main ways of defining working memory.  Which we choose determines how to go about enhancing the same, yet so different terms.

In colloquial terms, working memory is the ultra short term form that stores numbers or letters for up to a minute.  In which case intermediate term memory would be on the scale of minutes to a day, and long term is days to years or more.  In other words, long term memory is for storing vacations, intermediate term memory is for storing facts during the-night-before-the-exam-cramming, and working memory is for doing the math exam problem mentally.  How do we enhance it - that is how do we purely extend its capacity and ability to transfer to longer terms?

In neurophysiological terms, working memory is not about storage and recall at all.  It is located in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain and associates multiple modalities across space and time to build a contextual representation.  Should a scary dog bark and howl at us, we tie in the space (neighbor's sidewalk) and time (dark evening) of our encounter with the scary canine.  How do we enhance it - that is how do we match environmental clues to warn us of Dog, without providing too many false positives?  Running for the hills at every neighbor-like sidewalk or every evening is hardly worth the added safety. 

Baddeley (1986) and Baddeley & Hitch (1974) showed that mnemonic rehearsal speed is inversely related to recall ability.  Their seminal model had different types of memories - working, short/intermediate, and long term roughly analogous to computer registers, RAM, and long term hard drives.  The working memory acts as the current scratchpad.  The scratch pad will be erased every minute.  So before that minute is up, the person must write and rewrite an important message on playback mode.  After, say, 10 repetitions, the working memory contents imprint or transfer on to longer term memory.  If the message  is shorter than 1 second, 10 repetitions should take less than 10 seconds.  If the message is too long, it may not last long enough to make 10 loops before it gets erased.  Implication: we break events into manageable chunks.  Further, we rehearse these chunks in mnemonic loops.

A team led by Jafarpour, et al. (2017) explored neural behavior with MEG (magneto encephalogram) during nominal attention and working memory phases.  That is, the MEG machine was running both while subjects were attending to multiple images and later when the subjects held the images in working memory.  Results showed that the working memory focused on the images that the attention did not.  Implication: Working memory is not mnemonic but dynamically allocated to compensate for a lack of attention.

Chugani & Phelps (1986) showed that frontal lobes and their associated attention and working memory functions are the last to begin development starting at 8 months of age in human infants.  All other brain regions including emotion, senses, motor, and speech all begin development much earlier.  Implication: attention and working memory are complex functions more dependent on sensorimotor impulses than as independent functions on their own.

Wong (2011) established an attention-working memory framework for decision making in uncertainty.  Attention and working memory are physically both centered on the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortical regions.  Therefore, it follows that this physical coupling may be indicative of a functional coupling.  Attention-working memory are two parts of a whole function whereby attended stimuli (selective attention) can join or associate together in context (executive attention). 

Wong & Versace (2012) showed that attention can be bottom up and locally driven.  Grouping and blending together, for example, visual regions of similar shapes and colors in close proximity transforms a buzzing, blooming confusion of images into regions of uniformity punctuated by anomalies.  These anomalies - or unusual regions of novelty unlike anything else in the scene - naturally draw our attention. 

If we go with the colloquial version of working memory, then purely more is better.  Banana, apple, carrot.  How do we store this list?  Easy - we say it to our selves as quickly as possible in a race against the foibles of our - maliciously(?) - nature-given extremely short duration time.  Banana apple carrot.  BananaAppleCarrot, BananaAppleCarrot, BananaAppleCarrot... 

We can strategically rehearse a short-hand, compressed version of the list.  Fruits BAC.  The downside is that we still need to uncompress the memory: Fruits BAC.  Was that Banana Apple and Cherry?

Either way, should we succeed in purely memorizing the list in storage, we would have expended much time and effort recreating machine storage.  We would have recreated a pen and paper pad.  We would have defined our working memory, perhaps our intelligence, in terms of a 1000-year old technology.  Looking for AI (Artificial Intelligence)?  Forget Watson or Siri or computer driven cars.  Look into the local town library - it contains more stories and memories more perfectly than the smartest among us by far.  And every one of them did not need to be pressed 10 times for the ink to hold.  We already have true AI.  We had it at least 500 years ago.  These already are our computer overlords.

If we go with the neurophysiological version, working memory is not memory at all - it has nothing in common with print library or machine binary storage.  It is not the gate keeping, temporary funnel that needs 10 repetitions to "learn" slowly what a computer write head or ink pen can do at single stroke.  As anyone suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) can attest, working memory does not need 10 repetitions to "learn" an important event at all. 

Working memory - more aptly termed executive attention - is an abstraction function that expands our contexts.  It pairs with the selective attention that trims our context.  Executive attention and selective attention do not so much as compensate for each other as they are rather two sides of the same function.  They expand or trim the contextual association to provide situational awareness. 

A friendly dog barks, but it is not the same as the Scary Dog.  We do not flee in horror because we have trimmed the context to be fairly specific.  But if we pass by the territory claimed by the Scary Dog, we are on guard even if we do not see or hear barking. We have expanded the context to have us generally ready. Taking the properly adapted action to the situation is situational awareness.

Enhancing neurophysiological selective and executive attention is adapting to the environment.  It is providing emotional modulators that help us to imprint salient warning signs of upcoming events.  The primary purpose is not to specifically hold a list of items for recall one minute later.  If it is important to us to recreate such a list -Banana Apple Carrot - then there must be some invested emotion in the situation.  It is the same emotion involved with detecting when Scary Dog approaches.  The emotion - e.g. fear -  imprints the contextual associations.  Under this perspective, the best way to store Banana Apple Carrot is to become scared or otherwise emotional during its exposure.  Oh My God - it's a Banana Apple Carrot coming!

Imprinted.  No need for mnemonic repetitions and the list will probably remain as a contextual warning trigger for a long term. 

Under this perspective, the reason repeating a list 10 times provides the appearance of working is that doing so imparts an emotional response.  Perhaps by repetition 8, the subject is steadily getting agitated, worried, proud, happy, or even upset.  The phasic, pulsed response highlights the material to imprint.

This neurophysiological approach  leads to a physiologically testable hypothesis.  The claim under this perspective is that working memory is not simply a passive, ephemeral storage function.  Rather it is a part of executive attention that imprints adaptive triggers in important situations.  It relies upon emotions - the stronger the emotion, the more important the situation, and the more stable the trigger (i.e. memory).  If research can show that dampening the emotion also dampens the ability to imprint a trigger (i.e. "store a memory"), this would empirically support this intuition.  Could anti-depressants impair our ability to recognize the Scary Dog or recite Banana Apple Carrot?

Watts, Gritton, Sweigart, & Poe (2012) explored this effect.  Among other effects, they "explored antidepressant REM suppression effects on learning by training animals daily on a spatial task under familiar and novel conditions..." They found that the antidepressants impaired the animals' ability to learn directed sequence paths in a maze.  In other words, the subjects had a hard time reciting Banana Apple Carrot.

In conclusion, the theoretical mechanisms - and even definition - of working memory still generate controversy.  But if we would like to hire or train better employees or graduate better students, it behooves us to grasp a balanced definition.  Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.

Otherwise all our textbooks and lectures would need to be 10 times longer - by repeating ourselves.