This is a very interesting suggestion that I may try out. To make sure I see the effect hope to do a before and after test. And do it with all my four sons.
But first I have some questions:
It could be that he just natively has a good working memory. I was always surprised by the very good episodic memory of my oldest son. And the rote memory of my second oldest. And the motor memory of my third. All untrained.
Are you sure this provides a benefit/is wirth the effort? We live in a digital age where we do have access to lots of short-term memory aids. - This is a genuine question I’m not sure on myself.
My personal guess would be the training itself doesn’t help much. But the memory techniques do.
Why? Because I playd lots of Concentration Game with all my sons and it is very difficult for all of them. But after I introduced building stories around the visible cards they were able to pick up the technique and at least improve somewhat.
I’m sure genetics plays a big role my son’s strong working memory, but his progress while training has been fast enough that I’m more than 90% confident that the training has significantly helped. Memory aids (like spell check) do reduce the value of having a good working memory, but don’t come close to negating it especially for children who will be taking many closed book exams, and because having to keep looking up things (like the syntax for a for loop) costs time, attention, and flow.
I don’t remember exactly when he started, but I know we were doing memory training when he was 6. The first thing we did was him repeating back a numerical sequence he heard from me.
I started doing comparable games (repeat long words, non-sense words and sentences) when they were quite young (basically growing out of talking with them when they started learning to talk). With the older trying too. But these games only confirm the same thing: Repeating a sequence by rote is hard (for them). Repeating whole sentences is much easier—but it likely happens that only the meaning is transported not the literal form. Songs are even more easy—but I’d guess that that’s due to other types of memory (rhythm?) cueing in.
Re: nonsense words—I use it to teach English to my 4-year old when we go outside. He sees a car—I tell him that it’s an ‘elephant’s car’, and say ‘elephant’ in English—he returns ‘elephant-mobile’:)
This is a very interesting suggestion that I may try out. To make sure I see the effect hope to do a before and after test. And do it with all my four sons.
But first I have some questions:
It could be that he just natively has a good working memory. I was always surprised by the very good episodic memory of my oldest son. And the rote memory of my second oldest. And the motor memory of my third. All untrained.
Are you sure this provides a benefit/is wirth the effort? We live in a digital age where we do have access to lots of short-term memory aids. - This is a genuine question I’m not sure on myself.
My personal guess would be the training itself doesn’t help much. But the memory techniques do. Why? Because I playd lots of Concentration Game with all my sons and it is very difficult for all of them. But after I introduced building stories around the visible cards they were able to pick up the technique and at least improve somewhat.
I’m sure genetics plays a big role my son’s strong working memory, but his progress while training has been fast enough that I’m more than 90% confident that the training has significantly helped. Memory aids (like spell check) do reduce the value of having a good working memory, but don’t come close to negating it especially for children who will be taking many closed book exams, and because having to keep looking up things (like the syntax for a for loop) costs time, attention, and flow.
When did he start this working memory training? Were there pre-cursors?
I don’t remember exactly when he started, but I know we were doing memory training when he was 6. The first thing we did was him repeating back a numerical sequence he heard from me.
I started doing comparable games (repeat long words, non-sense words and sentences) when they were quite young (basically growing out of talking with them when they started learning to talk). With the older trying too. But these games only confirm the same thing: Repeating a sequence by rote is hard (for them). Repeating whole sentences is much easier—but it likely happens that only the meaning is transported not the literal form. Songs are even more easy—but I’d guess that that’s due to other types of memory (rhythm?) cueing in.
Re: nonsense words—I use it to teach English to my 4-year old when we go outside. He sees a car—I tell him that it’s an ‘elephant’s car’, and say ‘elephant’ in English—he returns ‘elephant-mobile’:)