Cognitive Scaffold

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MENTAL MODEL · M9252

Working Memory Capacity Limit

Working Memory Capacity Limit
Learn & MetacognitionmediumCognitive Psychology
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Updated 2026-08-15

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Working memory is limited in capacity, holding roughly four plus or minus one chunk at a time, and limited in duration, losing unrehearsed information within seconds. It is the bottleneck of cognitive processing. The design consequence is to respect that limit: teaching, interfaces, and presentations should not overload it, and chunking, reducing simultaneous presentation, and offloading into long-term memory are the working responses.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Respect the four: never present more chunks at once than the capacity can hold. - Chunk to expand: regroup information into larger chunks so each one carries more. - Offload: use notes, diagrams, and external memory to carry what the head should not.

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Information that enters working memory either gets processed into long-term storage or decays within seconds, and the processing channel itself can only hold a few units at once. Because capacity and duration are both bounded, exceeding the limit does not slow learning, it breaks it, and what cannot be held cannot be processed at all.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memoryZH · Explicit
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