5 Effective Ways to Boost Working Memory

What if you knew that there were at least five things you could do today to help your teen focus better and more easily remember information? Boosting working memory (our capacity to store and recall information quickly and easily) doesn’t have to mean long hours at the kitchen table or enrolling in a complicated workshop. Here are the simple strategies you can take today to help your student or teen successfully boost working memory.

Although we use the term “teen” throughout for readability, each of these strategies works just as well for adults and younger learners. For a detailed look at how executive functions typically develop across the lifespan, see our Executive Functioning Skills by Age Guide.

What is working memory?

In our previous Executive Functioning 101 article, we detailed all the basics of working memory. When we boost a teen’s working memory, we’re building the capacity to store and recall information. Working memory is the skill of remembering information and then applying that knowledge at a later time.
Working memory applies to many different learning situations, including academics. We use working memory to help us:

• Complete reading and math-related tasks.
• Solve puzzles and story-problems.
• Use strategy and rule-following to win games.
• Follow complicated, multiple-step instructions.
• Learn from and understand social situations at home, work, and school.

Nature or Nurture: Can You Boost Working Memory

Like so many other psychology and child development areas, there’s a debate among researchers about nature vs. nurture and working memory. Some believe we are born with a fixed working memory capacity. We inherit working memory through “nature” or our genetics. Others believe that working memory can be “nurtured.” In part, it’s challenging to study working memory.
In laboratory and applied settings, teens get better when given tools to boost working-memory-related tasks like math, reading, and recalling factual information. Some researchers question whether improvements we see are simply “practice effects” or enhancements because of repeatedly doing the same tasks. Other researchers describe these improvements as an expansion in working memory.

But for all practical purposes, what’s important for our teens is that there’s an improvement.

All evidence supports that the tools and strategies below will help your teen perform these crucial tasks with more fluency and independence. Even if we can’t yet settle the nature vs. nurture debate, we can still help teens boost these skills.

Why Working Memory Exercises Help

There are two main ways to boost working memory skills: strategy training and core training. Both have shown promise in clinical and applied settings at helping learners improve how they remember information and use it in new environments.

Strategy Training

Strategy training involves teaching more effective ways to store, maintain, and retrieve information from working memory. The idea of strategy training is to provide “tips and tricks” that apply to recalling information in various settings. One strategy is trained at a time and then generalized to many different working memory tasks. Things like using mnemonic devices and visualization exercises are two forms of strategy training that can then be used for all types of recall tasks.

Core Training

Unlike strategy training with a specific tool or exercise to improve recall, core training attempts to reduce the errors that happen when our working memory fails. Core training involves high-intensity, rapid repetition of working-memory tasks, often in the face of interference and challenge. Increasing how a teen recalls information under pressure improves the ability to “tune out the noise” or incorrect information.
Core training often includes a broad approach, with many different types of tasks and stimuli included in the training program. Practicing a diversity of skills at a high frequency potentially increases the likelihood of working memory gains.

Strategy training and core training have both been shown to be effective at boosting working memory capacity. Consider some of these exercises below to boost your teen’s working memory that includes both elements of strategy and core training:

5 Exercises to Boost Your Teen’s Working Memory

1. Conduct a learning styles inventory

To identify the best strategies to help boost your teen’s working memory, it may help first identify your teen’s learning style. O’Brien (1989) developed a checklist for parents and teachers to evaluate the preferred and most effective learning mode for students. Determining if your teen is a visual (learn by “seeing” information), haptic or kinesthetic (learn by “doing and moving”), or auditory (learn by “hearing” information) learner can help guide how you might boost executive functioning skills like working memory.

2. Try Mindfulness Training

Early on in the studies of mindfulness and meditation training, it became apparent that there was a close connection between mindfulness and working memory. Multiple studies show that learning basic mindfulness techniques can improve attention, minimize distractions, and more easily recall information. Even more important, these findings have generalized to students with unique learning needs.

3. Get Active

What if one of the easiest ways to boost your teen’s working memory was to promote daily physical activity? Studies show that individuals who engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise 5 or more days per week have direct and indirect effects on the brain and working memory. The brain regions that control working memory are larger for individuals that exercise over those that do not. Prolonged physical activity also promotes better mood and sleep, which can also boost short- and long-term memory.
To start an exercise habit with your teen, check out our guide to helping your teen create habits that stick.

4. Try brain training games

Your teen’s passion for video games may also be a great place to expand working memory. There are several different “brain training” apps and video-game platforms available that both maximize the strategy-training method (to teach your learner new ways to do reading, writing, math, and communication tasks) and the core-training method (to teach your learner to do these tasks rapidly and with fluency). The jury is still out on which games have the best benefit for which types of learners, so it’s worth doing your homework before you shell out cash for an app or gaming platform.

5. Reduce stressors for your teen

One of the final ways you can quickly boost executive functioning skills like planning, self-control, flexibility, and working memory is to reduce your teen’s overall level of stress. Chronic stress can deteriorate your teen’s health, behavior, and ability to practice the focused attention required for working-memory skills. Helping to support your teen, provide a safe environment, and teaching your teen how to reduce and cope with stress triggers can set the stage for skill acquisition.

Further Reading

• Life Skills Advocate Blog: Executive Functioning Skills 101: Working Memory
• BadriGargari, R., Nemati, S., & KhaniSalavat, Z. (2020). The effectiveness of mindfulness training on span of working memory in children with specific learning disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 10(1), 32-47.
• Building the Core Skills Youth Need For Life – A Guide for Education and Social Service Practitioners
• Harvard Business Review – Mindfulness Can Literally Change Your Brain
• Harvard Health Beat – Exercise can boost your memory and thinking skills
• Life Skills Advocate Blog – How To Help Your Child Create Habits That Actually Stick
• O’Brien, L. (1989). Learning styles: Make the student aware. NASSP Bulletin, 73(519), 85-89.
• Scientific American – Does ‘Brain Training’ Actually Work?