The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory
The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory
As the pace of technological change accelerates, we are increasingly experiencing a state of information overload. Statistics show that we are interrupted every three minutes during the course of the work day. Multitasking between email, cell-phone, text messages, and four or five websites while listening to an iPod forces the brain to process more and more informaton at greater and greater speeds. And yet the human brain has hardly changed in the last 40,000 years.
Are all these high-tech advances overtaxing our Stone Age brains or is the constant flood of information good for us, giving our brains the daily exercise they seem to crave? In The Overflowing Brain, cognitive scientist Torkel Klingberg takes us on a journey into the limits and possibilities of the brain. He suggests that we should acknowledge and embrace our desire for information and mental challenges, but try to find a balance between demand and capacity. Klingberg explores the cognitive demands, or “complexity,” of everyday life and how the brain tries to meet them. He identifies different types of attention, such as stimulus-driven and controlled attention, but focuses chiefly on “working memory,” our capacity to keep information in mind for short periods of time. Dr Klingberg asserts that working memory capacity, long thought to be static and hardwired in the brain, can be improved by training, and that the increasing demands on working memory may actually have a constructive effect: as demands on the human brain increase, so does its capacity.
The book ends with a discussion of the future of brain development and how we can best handle information overload in our everyday lives. Klingberg suggests how we might find a balance between demand and capacity and move from feeling overwhelmed to deeply engaged.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars This is not as good as I expected.
I read this book, partly because of the good ratings it got on here. I am disappointed.
The phrase “working memory” is not very correct. I think that “memory capacity” is a much better phrase to use.
It has many pages, but it really doesn’t say much. A lot of time, it was only asking more questions, or just repeating what it has already mentioned earlier. The graphs are simple, just like how a college student does for his assignment. I was hoping that it will teach me some techniques to improve my memory capacity. Basically, you have to try to remember things to your full capacity, then you can see improvement on your memory capacity.
I can conclude the whole book in a few short sentences. Everyone has a memory capacity. For people who have ADD, their memory capacity are smaller, therefore, they tend to forget things quicker, hence the reason why they are so hyperactive, and lose track of what they are doing at the moment.
4 Stars Good, but not the best
This is an awesome subject, and this is a good read. Nothing really wrong with the book, but it just doesn’t quite lift itself up to being world-class science writing.
We take an understandable tour thought current (2008) research (fully referenced) and thinking in that part of memory we call ‘working memory.’ The idea of our old ’stone age’ brain in the modern flood of multi-tasking information is introduced, and then explored in enough detail to be interesting to someone really wanting to know more about working memory.
5 Stars Recent revelations about attentional abilities, information processing, and brain training
In his introductory first chapter, Torkel Klingberg proposes that, in addition to determining how to learn to be less stressed by decelerating the pace of our lifestyle, we must also accommodate “our thirst for information, stimulation, and mental challenges. It is arguably when we determine our limits and find an optimal balance between cognitive demand and ability that we can not only achieve deep satisfaction but also develop our brain’s capacity the most.” Klingberg stresses the need to achieve and then maintain what Jonah Lehrer characterizes as “perfect equilibrium” in his recently published How We Decide. First, in Chapter 2, Klingberg examines the mental demands that surround us every day and compete for our attention, “through which the information flood re4aches the brain.” (These mental demands comprise what marketers correctly call the “clutter” that they struggle to penetrate with their messages.) At one point, Klingberg cites an experiment that demonstrates “one of the rudimentary mechanisms of attention: the selection of neurons to be stimulated at the expense of others. The phenomenon is called [begin italics] biased competition [end italics].”
Then in Chapter 3, he examines “the really interesting constraints [that] lie in how we control our attention and how we retain the information we absorb.” (It is important to keep in mind that if we do not focus our attention on something, such as the explanation of the specific subject Klingberg that he is discussing, we will not remember it.) “How do we remember what it is we concentrate on? The answer is [begin italics] working memory [end italics].” That is our ability to remember information for brief periods of time, usually a matter of seconds. Our long-term memory that retains events in which we have been involved in one way or another or facts about them are “encoded in long-term storage through a chain of biochemical and cellular processes that Klingberg examines. However, during the remainder of his book, he focuses almost entirely on working memory because “it not only retains instructions, numbers, and positions in the memory but also seems to play a critical part in our ability to solve problems [once we] remember what it is we are to concentrate on.
There are several reasons why others think so highly of this book. Here are two of mine. First, Klingberg brilliantly and (yes) patiently explains for non-scholars such as I (a) how and why our brains overflow with an increasingly greater number of “messages” from an increasingly greater number of information sources (e.g. other persons, electronic and print media, The Web, telephones, billboard), (b) how and why at least some of it is retained by working and long-term memory capabilities, and (c) what we must do to achieve and then maintain a balance of working load with working memory capacity, if not the “perfect equilibrium” to which Lehrer refers. “If we analyze the situation through the lens of the concept of working memory, we find that your feelings are matched by something quantifiable: the simultaneous inflow of two streams of information is extremely demanding on working memory.” Moreoever, the complexities and consequent difficulties of this inundation are exacerbated by the fact there is a constant updating, revision, and even replacement of the information we have retained. That is why Klingberg suggests, “we must always be aware of the limited scope we have for receiving information.” Choices, sometimes very difficult choices must be made…frequently when there is a crisis. The safe landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River on January 15th offers an excellent case in point. Captain Chesley (”Sully”) Sullenberger working memory of procedures enabled him to process and then respond to the information provided by the computers aboard the Airbus A320.
In his review for the Wall Street Journal (Monday, December 15, 2008), Christopher Chambris suggests another reason why I think so highly of this book. “For Mr. Klingberg, the mismatch between our modern lives and ancient brains is most evident in the problems of working memory and attention, but another culprit may be at work. We are easily distracted also because we vastly overvalue what happens to us [begin italics] right now [end italics] compared with what comes in the future and because novelty is intrinsically rewarding. So whatever we are supposed to be focusing on has to compete with every new email, new task, new blog post and new conversation that wanders into our information sphere.” Chamblis’ purpose is not to suggest how to cope with various workplace “culprits.” It remains to be determined by additional research in a new field of neuroscience whether or not the capacities of the “ancient brain” can be increased to accommodate the “flow” of information in the 21st century. However, in my opinion, Torkel Klingberg has made a substantial and significant contribution to our understanding of what workplace supervisors can and should do to balance their working load with working memory capacity within their own “information sphere” and also help others for whom they are responsible to do so within theirs’. The extent to which workplace distractions are reduced will almost certainly determine the extent to workplace productivity will increase. Moreover, there will be another benefit of incalculable value: improved worker morale.
4 Stars Explaining Why Sometimes You Just Feel Overwhelmed
Technology not only keeps us connected, informed, and always available, it also often overwhelms us. Too much information can leave us feeling lost, unfocused, and out of control. The reasons for that, as neuroscientist Klingberg explains, is that our brain is still mostly the same stone-age brain we had 20,000 years ago. Even though there are limits to just how much information our brains can juggle at one time (seven items at any point, plus or minus two, in what is called “working memory”), there are tools to improve that capacity.
The book has a scholarly tone, but Klingberg provides a good balance between the science and the practical, with fun diversions into Zen, IQ test score increases, music, and juggling. The only drawback is the lack of guides to increasing mental ability. There are a few mentioned, but not enough for practical purpose. Nor did he really discuss the growth of “brain game” computer programs, all guaranteed to make you smarter or mentally younger. Still an interesting book, especially for those interested in why when too much information is coming at them, they seem to slow down or lose focus.
4 Stars Interesting, But I’m Not Sure of the Point
I’m probably not the target audience, reading this book in a vacuum among other psychology books. If I was a college student and this was an early textbook, I would consider it excellent. It is well-written in that the author clearly understands the different aspects of memory and intelligence. I gained a better sense of “working memory” than I ever had and that’s my biggest takeaway from the book.
But early on, he actually says this isn’t a textbook covering all memory and attention research. Instead, he tried to write a book on a series of associated studies that together build up a story. I got all that but somewhere, I lost track of that story. There isn’t a great conclusion. That doesn’t make the book a bad book, and in fact it is quite good, but there is no super satisfying payoff at the end.
I’ve read that this book isn’t an easy read and have concluded that a) the author is simply smarter than me and b) that if the reader approaches this book as though it were a textbook, it is much more satisfying and meaningful. It’s really an assessment of memory and intelligence to leave you ready to draw your own implications.
Filed under: Mental Health Book Reviews