Half a Mind to ..

Life after brain injury – one small victory at a time.

Tag: working-memory

  • Externalising Thought(Strategy 014)

    Externalising Thought(Strategy 014)

    I needed a different way to think

    After my brain injury, I gradually realised that some tasks were failing for a reason that had little to do with whether I understood them. I could understand a problem perfectly well and still lose my place in it. An interruption could displace what I had been holding in mind within seconds. Sometimes the limitation showed itself in much smaller ways: give me two pieces of spoken information in quick succession and the second could simply push the first one out.

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  • Small problems too big (Insight 040)

    Small problems too big (Insight 040)

    Some small problems are now too big to fit in working memory (Insight 040)

    Before my brain injury, I rarely thought about thinking.

    Like most people, I simply got on with it.

    If someone asked me to multiply 17 by 13, I would mentally break the problem into smaller pieces. Ten times seventeen is 170. Three times seventeen is 51. Add them together and the answer is 221.

    The arithmetic is straightforward. What matters is that the intermediate results have to be held somewhere while the calculation is being completed.

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