Have you ever spent ages planning brilliant learning tasks, only for students to sit there in silence, confused or disengaged? Or felt frustrated when they rely on translators or AI tools instead of thinking for themselves?
What is Working Memory?
Imagine trying to remember someone’s phone number. You might repeat it over and over in your head, worried that if you stop, you’ll forget it.
This is because this phone number is held in your working memory (the part of your brain that holds and processes information you are actively using right now), and working memory can only handle a small amount of new information at any one time.
Figure 1: AI-generated illustration of ideas spilling out of working memory (OpenAI, 2025)
How can we cope with limited working memory?
While the brain has limited working memory, it has an unlimited store of information in long-term memory. This unlimited information can be used alongside working memory.
For example, your knowledge of the English alphabet is so good, it’s probably automatic. Your brain takes this from your long-term memory so you don’t have to use precious working memory space trying to decode the words on this page. You can now use your working memory space for higher-order skills such as wondering if you agree or disagree with the ideas in this article.
Schema in Long-Term Memory
One way schemas can grow and adapt is through automation.
Another way is by chunking multiple elements into a single meaningful unit.
Figure 2: AI generated image of schema in long-term memory (OpenAI, 2025).
For example, while you might struggle to remember a new phone number, you can probably remember your childhood phone number because it’s automated in long-term memory and chunked as a single meaningful unit, rather than separate numbers.
Chunking and Automation in Chess
Research by De Groot (1966, as cited in Chase & Simon, 1973) supports the role of schema automation and chunking in memory performance.
Figure 3: Chess board and pieces. Photo by V. Karpovich from Pexel
De Groot found that master-level chess players, when shown mid-game chess positions for just five seconds, could almost perfectly reconstruct the configuration of pieces. In contrast, weaker players recalled far fewer pieces. However, when the positions were randomly arranged (lacking real-game structure) masters performed no better than novices.
This suggests masters’ superior memory is not due to their working memory capacity, but to their ability to chunk configurations of chess pieces into single meaningful units stored in long-term memory through repeated exposure to real games and familiar patterns.
Working Memory with Schemas
Let’s test this idea of schema and chunking with a quick memory test.
Your working memory can hold about 7±2 items, and it can only process 4 elements at once. Therefore, we can expect that the less developed your schema is, the less you will be able to remember.
Below is a list of 10 words. Read them for 10 seconds, then try to write down as many as you can remember.
- Aldridge
- Cup
- Stadium
- Oxford
- Yellow
- Milk
- Jim Smith
- Pitch
- Queen’s Park Rangers
- 1986
For some people this activity was very difficult. Their working memory was working overtime trying to remember the different words as different elements. They probably couldn’t remember all the words (elements) because their working memories became overloaded.
However, football fans may have been able to chunk some of the elements (words) into single meaningful units (e.g., stadium, pitch, cup).
For Oxford United football fans, this should have been easy: they can chunk all 10 words (elements) into a single meaningful unit — Oxford United’s 1986 Milk Cup Final victory. They played in yellow with their top striker John Aldridge against Queen’s Park Rangers who were managed by their ex-manager Jim Smith.
Now imagine you’re trying to memorise or work with words that are not in your first language. This is even more difficult, because you may have no schema for the words, or even for some of the alphabet. The letters in some of the words become separate elements. To a non-native speaker, the list might look more like this:
João Ferreira – Coppa – Estádio – Oxonia – Giallo – Lait – Teren – 1986 – Guardiões – da Rainha
What does this mean for learning tasks?
When designing learning tasks, we need to consider what schema students have related to the task.
For example, if we want students to interact with a complex text, will they be using their limited working memory to:
- recognise some letters of the alphabet
- work out the meaning of individual words
- figure out how the sentences are organised and what they mean
- identify the author’s main points
- respond critically to those points
If students are using their working memory to decode words and sentences, they may struggle to engage in higher-order tasks like critical analysis.
That’s why we need to always keep in mind students’ working memory limits when designing learning tasks.
Thanks for sharing this blog Nick. It is helpful to think about the students’ working memories and schemas in relation to task design, especially when we are trying to help students work with very challenging academic texts. What have you found works best to support students when they have to deal with such texts, despite limited existing schema and possible working memory overload?
Thank you for your question. I think there always has to be a balance between schema and scaffolding (the less schema the students have, the more scaffolding they need).
With texts specifically, learners might need help with understanding
1) the content
We can provide scaffolding by providing them with important background information (or even better encouraging them to look up the background information themselves).
2) the organisation
With journal articles, we can make students aware of the generic organisation (e.g., CARS model for introductions)
3) the language
We can encourage students to look up key words before reading or even get support with AI tools if used in a way that helps with the language rather than replaces their need to grapple with the ideas in the text
This is a great post. Interesting to see some ideas around how folks with different situations can also be as successful – ADHD, Autism, etc.
Thank you. The ideas about memory and schema complement ideas on accessible design really nicely. I can hopefully focus more on specific accessibility requirements in future posts.