Simon Says
When I was a child, someone gave me an electronic game called Simon. It was a round device with four bright panels that lit up and beeped when pressed. The game started simply enough. The first panel would light up and play a note, then two panels, then three, and so on, each round adding to the sequence. The player’s job was to press the buttons and repeat the pattern, which got longer and longer until you inevitably made an error. Then all the panels would flash, and Simon would play a melody that resembled a playground jeer, and you would start all over again.
I hated that game. In truth, I half-suspected an evil clown had infiltrated a toy factory to inflict its menace upon children all over the world. I hated it because there was no way to win, and I inevitably felt stupid. But many years later, when I became a teacher, I learned that Simon had nothing to do with being smart or dumb. Instead, I learned that it exploited a limit that everyone has. Simon was a perfect illustration of a person’s Working Memory Limit.
What is Working Memory?
In short, Working Memory is the number of new bits of information a person can keep in mind at a single time, whether numbers, letters, shapes, words or ideas. In the case of that infernal Simon game, each flashing panel was a piece of information. The chain would extend from one piece to infinity, ending when the person’s working memory limit was reached.
We all have a Working Memory Limit. For most of us, it’s around seven bits of information. (Think of the length of your telephone number without the area code.) Now that we rely less on rote memorization with so much information digitally accessible, some estimates place that limit closer to four. Most of us intuitively understand that there is a limit to what we can remember. If you’ve never played Simon, perhaps you’ve played “memory,” a game where you match pairs of cards turned face down on a table. Perhaps you’ve had trouble remembering a random code or an account password.
And yet, while we all know there is a limit to what we can remember, we also know that we remember far more than four to seven bits of information. We remember the names of dozens of people. We apply scores of traffic rules and recall the plots of entire movies. We speak and write thousands of words and, depending on our work and education, we apply countless historical, numerical and professional concepts. Fortunately for us, Working Memory is not the entire story. So what is going on here? The answer is that information we have committed to memory resides in our Long-Term Memory.
Long-Term Memory
Long-Term Memory is downstream from Working Memory. Whereas Working Memory refers to random bits of information that a person may remember temporarily, Long-Term Memory means that the same information has been transferred to durable storage within our minds.
This distinction is born out of necessity. We have limited cognitive capacity, and the world is a big place that is constantly bombarding us with information. We need to filter extraneous information to reserve our Long-Term Memory for only the most important information.
Here is the challenge – moving information from our Working Memory to our Long-Term Memory is not within our direct control. If it were, we would never forget something that we tried to remember. There are a number of triggers and strategies that can help us move information to our Long-Term Memory, such as repetition, story-telling that invokes strong emotions, or helping people make connections to things they already know. In fact, teachers apply a lot of these strategies when they plan out lessons for students. Yet, no matter how many strategies we employ, it is still difficult to transfer information to our Long-Term Memory.
Working Memory and Self-Represented People
Working Memory matters when we work with self-represented people. Most self-represented people do not have much experience navigating through the legal system. Without that experience and repeated exposure, they tend to rely more on their Working Memory when making choices, which limits them to a few bits of information remembered for a short time.
The good news is that, once we identify this limit, we can start to apply strategies to support people. An easy example is that we can break down long court forms into smaller sections with related information. We’ll discuss more of these strategies in other articles. For now, it is enough to remember that we all have a Working Memory limit.
Key Design Questions:
Can you think of other games that exploit your Working Memory Limit?
When might legal information exceed a person’s Working Memory Limit?
When should we work to transition information from a person’s from Working Memory to their Long-Term Memory?
Why?
