By James Marrs
It is no surprise that the human element often lacks explicit memory in which individuals don’t understand. Most researchers have proved that people can remember around seven items or words, give or take a couple. Most recent studies have indicated that number has decreased over time, to around four items, or words, on average. I question if the timeline of events is a role that affects this variable or if the general rule has always been around four items that we remember. An example of the timeline approach I mentioned is as more distractions raise, then the possibility of items remembered are less. Our society has moved at a very rapid rate of technological advances which has its benefits and risks. Working memory has often been referred to as short term memory, where you pick up pieces to a puzzle, from what you have learned, in hopes to use the information in the near future. Often, working memory requires individuals to be focused and goal oriented to move in a direction of progress, a lack of maintaining focus would cause higher levels of frustration which would be very intolerable, if persistent. By this, I refer to using our memories with action or other variables such as word chunking. This creates better opportunities for humans to remember important information. It is also necessary to learn using the hands-on traits of learning to restore memory.



’s not uncommon for college students to pull all-nighters the night before a big exam. They either forgot about the exam and have no choice but to stay up all night and study or are so nervous that they’d rather study than sleep. Students try to stay up into the late hours of the night, attempting to remember every detail on their study guides, flipping through their flashcards over and over again. Before they realize it, its 8 am, and they decide to call it quits and grab the closest source of caffeine just to have some energy to make it through the exam. Throughout the exam, they find themselves struggling to remember the information they spent all night studying. They’re fatigued and although they try their best to remember, the information just isn’t coming to them. Weeks later students receive their results from the exam, only to find that their grade didn’t match the amount of effort put into studying for it.
I can imagine that we all have had this conversation at least once, maybe in high school or college. Maybe it was for a different subject, but the need to cram is the same. We have busy lives as future and current undergraduates.