You likely gave an answer to this first question in just a few moments. After all, that meal was probably less than 24 hours ago. Information that we have recently experienced or "gathered" is stored in a category of memory that is called "working memory." In a typical class day, you might attend two or three classes, and from each one you will receive a "load" of new information that gets plopped into your working memory. Most of what is stored in working memory is bits and pieces of information--mostly disconnected, or at best, loosely-connected details, facts, events, and so on.

Working memory has a limited capacity, and the information it stores fades over time. Research indicates that unless we review or in some way process the information further, chances are good that we will lose at least 40% of the details in working memory within the first 24 hours. In other words, the contents of our working memory are temporary. Much of the information you learned in class today and the other random experiences of the last 24 hours will be replaced in a day or two by new experiences and new information. What does this mean to you as a student? There are three major implications:

1. Recognize the limitations of your working memory by capturing newly-learned information in a more permanent form. Take good class notes and use a highlighter in your textbooks. Being only an attentive listener in class and a laid-back, non-interactive reader forces you to depend on a very limited working memory to retain the information.
2. Try to review newly-gathered information within 24 hours. Make a habit of spending the 5 and 10-minute bits and pieces of "slack time," when you are waiting for something else to happen, in brief reviews of the notes you took in class or the material you read last night.
3. Don’t depend on cramming for tests. It's tempting to just put off review and study until one marathon study session the night (or a few hours before) the test. But there are two problems with this strategy. First, much of the information is long gone, having been replaced by newer information in our working memory. (You can't review it if it isn't there.) Second, cramming is nothing more than trying to force a huge amount of detail into a working memory that is already near capacity. The details remain unconnected and don’t really serve you well in developing an understanding of the concepts. And like all other information in working memory, the crammed-in material will get "flushed" out in a day or two and be lost to you in the future.