Vivid

Short term memory practice, and what it is good for

This is a short visual memory game. It is deliberately quick, and the reason it earns its place alongside the maths tools is that a large share of what looks like carelessness in maths is really a memory bottleneck rather than a knowledge one.

What the game is training

Holding several items in mind briefly, then reproducing them accurately, is the same underlying process a child uses when carrying a digit, tracking a negative sign, or remembering what the second half of a question asked while doing the first half.

The transfer is not guaranteed and we would not claim otherwise. What is reliable is that the game makes the bottleneck visible, and a visible bottleneck is one you can work around.

Watch the strategy, not the score

The interesting moment is when a child stops trying to hold each item separately and starts grouping them. Chunking is the single most useful memory strategy there is, and it appears on its own if you give a child enough attempts.

When it appears, name it. "You just grouped those into pairs, that's why it worked" is worth more than any amount of practice, because it turns an accidental strategy into a deliberate one that transfers to spellings, number facts and revision.

Keep the sessions short

Two or three minutes. These tasks are genuinely tiring and the return drops off quickly within a single session. Frequency beats duration by a wide margin.

Stop while the child still wants another go. That is the whole trick to making anything voluntary last more than a fortnight.

The higher return alternative

If your goal is fewer careless mistakes in maths rather than a better memory in general, there is a more direct route: make the number facts automatic so they stop consuming memory at all, and write the steps down so they do not have to be held.

Our times tables trainer handles the first and it is the highest-return change available to most students.

Questions parents ask

Where to go next