09/12/2022 16:00 Calculating the Size of the Working Memory of the Human Brain – World Mental Calculation

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Calculating the Size of the Working Memory of the

Human Brain
April 6, 2020 by Daniel Timms

We’ve seen before that the maximum speed the of human brain is about 60 bits per
second, which of course is super slow compared an electronic calculator. However it’s
not the only challenge that the human brain faces when performing difficult mental
math!

Imagine you were asked to to find out what the most popular car colour is in your area,
by watching the traffic passing on a particular road for half an hour.

Red, black, white, white, blue, black, silver, red, white, …

You could simply set up a tally, and at the end check which car was seen the most. It
would be a very easy, almost mindless task.

But now imagine that it was raining and you couldn’t write anything – your only tools
were your eyes and brain. Now how would you do this? Suddenly it becomes much,
much harder!

Without being able to store anything on the paper, you are restricted to using the
working memory of your own brain to store anything you would write on the paper
– and that is very limited indeed.

Working Memory and Mental Math

This has profound implications for mental math, because we can only handle numbers
using methods that “fit” inside our working memory. (With practice) we may be able to

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solve 4587 ÷ 11 by simply removing multiples of 11 from 4587:

4587 – 4400 = 187 … and 187 – 110 = 77 … so the answer is 417

But it’s very difficult to solve 1744982049 ÷ 54903 by subtracting multiples of 54903
because we quickly end up trying to store more numbers in our mind than we can
handle. (Luckily there is a much easier method for performing calculations such as
these).

So if our limited working memory (analogous to the RAM of an electronic computer) is

so important for mental calculation – how much of it do we have?

Baddeley’s Model

The widely-accepted model for the human working memory was proposed by
Psychologists Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and states that it has two main components:

Phonological loop: a short loop of sound that can be continually repeated and
modified
Visuospatial Sketchpad: a basic color image (or video)

Size of the Phonological Loop (PL)

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According to research by Psychologist Miller in 1956, we can remember between 5-9

“chunks” of information when stored in our inner monologue.

Simpler chunks (such a binary digits) may be slightly easier than complex chunks (such
as words) but they fall regardless in the same 5-9 range. And certainly when the chunks
are numbers 0-9 it’s been shown experimentally to follow this pattern, whether they are
spoken aloud to us or whether we read them using our inner monologue.

It’s easy to test this for yourself – for each of the following, carefully read the number
aloud, and then write the number down without looking.

Six random digits

718049

Seven random digits

6887102

Eight random digits

21095931

Nine random digits

331079468

Ten random digits

4662720149

Now, we would expect a higher PL capacity to improve mental calculation ability.

However in workshops I’ve given where I’ve performed this experiment, even the top
human calculators are unable to recall more than 8-9 digits spoken in their native
language. How many did you get in the experiment above?

This illustrates that the limit is fairly uniform among people – or possibly that top
human calculators rely more on their visuospatial sketchpad than their phonological
loop.

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Size of the Visuospatial Sketchpad (VSS)

One of the most impressive displays of mental calculation ability is flash anzan – where
a sequence of numbers is flashed on a screen, and the task is to add these up. This
calculation category is dominated by students of the soroban abacus, who perform this
entirely visually (and can even hold a conversation at the same time!)

Mental Arithmetic World Champion - Flash Anzan

The human calculator above is soroban master Naofumi Ogasawara breaking a flash
anzan world record at the Mental Calculation World Cup in 2012. The most impressive
thing here is that he is working with 5-digit numbers! Since the answer will be a 6-digit
number this suggests that he is able to store 6-digit numbers in his VSS comfortably
enough to also perform mathematical operations on them.

Naofumi is not the only person able to handle such large numbers in this way. For
example Jeonghee Lee, who won the flash anzan event at Memoriad in 2016, and is the

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current world record holder for addition, has also demonstrated equivalent ability as
Naofumi.

Another simpler way to measure the the size of your visuospatial sketchpad is to look
at a string of numbers (but without saying the numbers aloud in your mind) and then
write it down a moment later.

You must not use the phonological loop! You can help avoid this by reciting an
unrelated phrase aloud, or by listening to music with clear lyrics in your native
language.

If you want to try this yourself, put some headphones on now before revealing the
numbers below (as you only get one chance to try).

Four random digits

2764

Five random digits

73606

Six random digits

247783

Seven random digits

1437485

What was your score? For me level 6 is difficult.

Clinical measurement of the size of the VSS is typically tested experimentally using the
Visual Pattern Span Test. I couldn’t find a good online test for this – so if you find one
please contact me to let me know! A high score seems to be about 15 squares,
although again there are very few results online for adults.

15 squares would be equivalent to 4-5 decimal digits (since 15 * log 2 = 4.52) which is
a little lower than our figures of 5-6 digits from the previous paragraphs. This perhaps

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shows that with practice, we can learn to use our VSS more effectively when dealing
with numbers.

Combining the Phonological Loop and Visuospatial Sketchpad

A natural question to wonder now is whether we can utilize these two types of working
memory simultaneously, or whether we have a total limit that can be assigned to either.
It turns out it is possible to use them simultaneously near to full capacity, although it
requires greater concentration.

In fact this is used by some participants in speed memory events, such as memorizing
a pack of playing cards. After using their standard mind palace system for the majority
of the cards, they can quickly store the remaining cards between their phonological
loop and visuospatial sketchpad, and therefore finish the memorization stage earlier for
a higher score.

You can try this for yourself by memorizing the following 10 digits – more than can
fit in either half of your working memory! Simply look at the image of the last 4 digits
to put them in your visuospatial sketchpad, read the first 6 digits aloud to put them in
your phonological loop, and finally glance again at the last 4 digits to ensure that
they are still clear in your VSS.

Then immediately write the full number down on paper. How was it?

Ten numbers in the form: 123456 ... 7890 (test A)

593662 … 4911

Ten numbers in the form: 123456 ... 7890 (test B)

805952 … 3738

 Training
 March 2020 Updates
 Mental Calculation Competitions in 2020 – Updates

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4 thoughts on “Calculating the Size of the Working Memory of the Human

Brain”

Eusebius Noronha
July 5, 2020 at 13:59

Hello,
Thank you for bringing this even during this time.
All the best

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Ynnad
April 28, 2020 at 07:46

Hello Daniel I think it’s great with how much dedication you run this site.

Even before I learned my Soroban skills, I used my VSS for calculations. If I tried
to use the Phonological Loop it totally messed up my concentration. I can
remember ten-digit numbers in 0.1 seconds. If I seriously train this for a while, I
still have room for improvement. I train with Ramón Campayo’s Speed Memory
v7. An even better program is this app (Number Blink 4). So I found out that
my current perception speed for seven digit numbers is 0.03 seconds. I don’t
use any special technique. I just perceive the number after the flash as
“afterglow”.

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Daniel Timms
April 28, 2020 at 13:32

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Thanks The Number Blink app looks like a good tool for testing working
memory, further than the brief examples I put in the text.

There is something called “flash memory” which is a fairly detailed memory

that is maintained for a very short period (maybe 1 second) after you finish
viewing the data. I think this is what you refer to as the “afterglow”. Of course
this needs to get encoded to longer-term memory very quickly otherwise the
detail is lost.

Storing 10 decimal digits in one second is very good, as I guess you can’t use
the phonological loop much in that time? How long can you store that
information for? If there were a 10-second delay before recalling the number
would that affect your scores?

Ramón Campayo has a record of 44 binary digits in 1 second, so the same

information as 13 decimal digits, but more difficult because it takes more
space on the page/screen, so that’s very impressive!

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Ynnad
April 28, 2020 at 14:21

I don’t practice time spans of at least one second. But I can easily remember
16 digits in a second even after a break of 2 minutes. I can also remember
the ten digits in 0.1 seconds longer. As soon as I wrote it down, that number
disappeared from my memory. I also have a very good natural number
memory for long-term memory.

I don’t know why but I’ve never spoken numbers in my mind. It feels very
unnatural and I can’t understand how it should help you remember.

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