My daughter was 5 when she started violin lessons. And at first, it was pretty chill and super cute. But then I started to get a little antsy.
It’s not like we were trying to groom her to be the next Heifetz, but still, I began to worry about the goofy way she was holding the instrument. Her funky bow hold and claw of a left hand. Her sumo wrestler-style power stance. Or in other words…everything.
So naturally, I tried giving her some tips. How to keep her right hand thumb bent, but also make sure her fingers on top of the bow weren’t all flat and stiff. How to keep her bow straight.
My intention was to be helpful, but the more advice I gave her, the worse things seemed to get. And the more frustrated and confused she seemed to become.
At first, I thought the problem was that I wasn’t a good teacher. That I wasn’t giving her the right technical instructions, or couldn’t explain them clearly enough.
But it turns out that the problem was essentially the opposite. I was actually being too helpful in my efforts to be a good teacher.
Wait…what?
Working memory
Have you ever gone to the grocery store without a written-out shopping list? Keeping the items inside your head instead? If so, you know what it feels like to use what’s known as “working memory.”
It’s a bit like a mental scratch pad, where you can store bits of information that you’re actively using in the moment.
The problem, of course, is that working memory has limits. And we can only keep so much stuff in our heads before things start spilling out. Plus, whatever we keep there tends to fade away pretty quickly too.
And how exactly does this apply to teaching or practicing?
A study!
Working memory capacity varies from person to person, so a multi-national team of researchers were curious to see how working memory differences might affect the learning process (Buszard et al., 2017).
They recruited 111 third and fourth graders, and gave them a series of assessments designed to measure working memory.
Then, the 24 students with the highest working memory capacity (the high WM group), and the 24 students with the lowest working memory (low WM group) proceeded with a few days of basketball training.
Low vs. high
To see how working memory capacity (WM) affects learning, the researchers made every student practice shooting a basketball under conditions that were designed to tax their working memory. The idea being, if working memory capacity was indeed an important factor in learning, they’d likely see some sort of difference in the two groups’ performance.
On Day 1 of practice, students took 20 shots to establish their baseline level of shooting ability. Then, they were given a handout with 5 written technical instructions, and asked to take 60 practice shots. After every 20 shots, they were given a 2-minute break to re-read the instructions (below).
Instructions:
- Bounce the ball on the ground twice before each shot
- Start with your elbow under the ball
- Use both hands to hold the ball but only shoot with one hand
- Extend your arm fully when shooting
- Finish the shot by pointing the shooting hand toward the rim
On Day 2 of practice, they took 120 practice shots, again with a 2-minute break every 20 shots to read the instructions.
On Day 3, they took 60 more shots, and then finished with a test of 20 shots to see how much they improved over the three days of practice.
And finally, a week later, everyone returned to take one last 20-shot test to see how well-ingrained their skills really were.
So…was there any difference in performance between the high and low working memory groups?
Shooting technique
The first aspect of performance that the researchers looked at was shooting form or technique. And based on a video analysis of their performances, the high WM group improved their shooting technique quite a bit over the course of the training. Their score improved by an average of 12 points from Day 1 to Day 4.
The low WM group, on the other hand, only improved by about 5 points over the course of training.
(Although you do have to take this with a grain of salt, as the difference didn’t reach statistical significance.)
Shooting performance
Things were a little clearer though when it came to shooting performance.
The high WM group improved their shooting score by 5.6 points from their initial pre-test to their final test a week after their last practice session.
Meanwhile, the low WM group actually got worse over the course of training, with scores dropping by 5.5 points on average. That’s right – they actually shot the ball better before they had received any instruction or practice!
So what are we to do with all of this?
Takeaways
For me, the big takeaway is that individual differences in working memory could potentially have a significant impact on learning. And that this may be why some people seem to respond pretty well to lots of explicit technical instruction, while others get paralyzed and seem to regress instead.
So in the case of my daughter, it’s not that she didn’t understand what I was saying. Or that she didn’t have ability or talent.
The problem was that I was asking her to think about too many things at once, and probably overwhelming her working memory capacity. Where instead of giving her even more instructions when it seemed like she wasn’t “getting” it, I should have done the opposite – by reducing the number of things she had to think about.
Which might leave you thinking “Hmm…I wonder if there’s a way to assess working memory so I can tailor instructions to each student…?”
Take action
Well, that’d be pretty cool, but the researchers note that the current methods for assessing working memory aren’t really practical for teachers or coaches to use. For instance, the researchers used four different measures of working memory and two measures of attention, which took about an hour per participant to administer.
However, they do note that it might be possible to informally estimate a student’s capacity. Basically, just give the student a task to do, vary the complexity of your instructions, and see how they respond. Like, what happens if you give them five instructions? Do they seem overwhelmed? What if you give them three? Or just one or two?
There are also other strategies, beyond lots of verbal instruction, that could perhaps help to reduce the working memory demands of a learning task too. Like breaking a skill down into smaller chunks (here), or additively chaining skills together (here), or adopting an external focus of attention in the early stages of learning (here).
I also asked Met Opera orchestra percussionist Rob Knopper to put together a video where he describes three practice hacks that he uses to deal with this working memory issue and maximize the effectiveness of his practice. Check it out here:
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References
Buszard, T., Farrow, D., Verswijveren, S. J., Reid, M., Williams, J., Polman, R., Ling, F. C. M., & Masters, R. S. W. (2017). Working memory capacity limits motor learning when implementing multiple instructions. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01350
