How to Manage Your Working Memory and Ace the SAT

As we noted in our last blog, the new SAT reading and math sections both place a greater demand than ever on working memory – the ability to hold information short-term to perform immediate tasks such as reading comprehension, problem solving, and reasoning. Standardized tests can’t help but burden students’ working memories: On a typical reading question, students need to read and hold in their minds the meaning of a paragraph or two while they think about the answer to a question they’ve also just read. But the SAT is a multiple-choice test, so they need to continue to think about that question while reading each of four often complicated answer choices while also referencing the content of the passage they still hopefully remember. On the math side of the test, interpreting the given information and deciding upon a solution strategy presents a working memory challenge before students even get to whatever complex algebra or geometry might be required to actually solve the problem.

Sounds like a lot, right? For many students it’s too much. One way for students to improve their scores is to employ tools, strategies and techniques to lower the cognitive load of the test and the concomitant working memory demands.

Do NOT use your brain as scratch paper!

The three core executive functions are working memory (the ability to “hold” things in your mind. Think “scratch paper’), cognitive flexibility, and inhibition (self-control). More advanced executive functions include planning, organizing, and decision-making, among others. We all have a finite amount, so we want to be strategic about how we use it. So, if we are using our brain (prefrontal cortex) for one task, we have fewer cognitive resources for others. This is why we WRITE things down. Use your mind for thinking. Let scratch paper be scratch paper, for the scratch paper will not swap with you and do the thinking!

SAT Math Tools: Your Brain, Your Pencil and Desmos

The switch from a paper-based test to a computer-based one was greeted with cheers by many digital native Gen Z students, but that change introduces another significant layer of complexity on the math test. Having the questions on a screen, but working on paper, places a cognitive demand of holding things in your mind while you get things on paper, as well as switching attention back and forth from your page to the screen.

Some students have responded by doing most everything possible on Desmos, the sophisticated fancy new embedded calculator in the digital SAT. And, that’s great…to a point. For many students, the SAT has been wonderfully Desmos-able, something College Board has noted. While, Desmos seems still as helpful as it ever was for turning a bad math score into a decent one, it’s not as helpful as students would like turning a good score into an elite one. College Board has always maintained that the SAT is not simply about memorizing facts and formulas but about knowing what tool to use and when. About this, at least, they are 100% correct.

Desmos is in essence a tool, but not one that can replace reasoning and problem-solving. The funkiest of math problems really require math reasoning. We’ve taken note of recent problems designed with “Desmos traps” that entice students to choose close but wrong answers, so that students may feel more confident that they have correct answers to questions when they don’t. For those problems, because the answers are not ones that students have reasoned their way to, students cannot know their answers are wrong.

Successful students, however, will use the right tool for the right job. They’ll use desmos for graphing and computation, but only in support of solutions they’re working out themselves the old-fashioned way – with pencil and paper.

SAT Reading Tools: Cueing, Highlighting and Elimination.

Returning to reading, even if the SAT reading questions were all easy (they aren’t), reading on a screen is not the same as reading on paper. Reading expert Maryanne Wolfe notes significant differences between digital reading and deep reading:

In describing the wonders of the “deep reading circuit” of the brain, Wolf bemoans the loss of literary cultural touchstones in many readers’ internal knowledge base, complex sentence structure, and cognitive patience, but she readily acknowledges the positive features of the digitally trained mind, like improved task switching.

Fortunately, the BlueBook app provides tools and presents passages and questions in ways that students can take advantage of in order to deepen their digital reading experiences.

In the days of the paper test, students would first need to deeply read a longer passage before even engaging with the questions. But the digital test is different: each question has its own short passage. The downside, of course, is the sheer number different passages to contend with. One way the SAT Reading section maintains its high cognitive load is that it never lets students do anything long enough to get comfortable: every 71 seconds they’re looking at a different passage (if they want to finish the test, that is!) One of the best ways to combat that is to read the question stem first. Are you looking to strengthen an argument? Weaken one? Provide a conclusion? Just as shopping with an actual list keeps you focused on the items you need and less apt to be swayed to buy ice cream, knowing what you’re looking for as you read makes it much easier to find, and it should also trigger a process for you. “Oh, it’s a structure/function question, I’ve seen those before and know what to do!” Even though the passages are always new, the questions are not, providing a touchstone of comfort and familiarity.

The testing tool also comes with a highlighter that works both on the questions and the passages (though, sadly, not the answer choices themselves.) That’s not to say students should make indiscriminate use of it: taking twice as long to read a passage that’s now pretty much completely highlighted is a waste of time. Successful students understand that “careless errors” or “stupid mistakes” are often simply mistakes of attention, and a highlighter is a great way to draw your attention to where it needs to be. Are you often fooled by verb agreement questions? Highlight that simple subject in the sentence. Do you sometimes fail to answer the right question, having gotten confused after reading all those answer choices? Highlight the 2 or 3 words in the question stem that are telling you what to do. Do you sometimes understand passages “backwards” having misunderstood something important? Highlighting transition words in the passage can help you follow the logical flow. In short, there are lots of ways to successfully use your highlighter, so try to find quick and easy solutions that bring your attention right to where you need it most.

While you unfortunately can’t highlight the answer choices, you do have a tool that can eliminate answer choices you think are wrong. And most students *never* use it. Here again, it’s all about moderation. You shouldn’t waste time striking answers for an easy question you’ve already found the answer to. But if you’re struggling on a complex paired reading passage or a quantitative evidence question with a confusing graph, it can be really helpful to visually eliminate an answer choice in which you’ve found a flaw. Those sorts of questions can present a sometimes overwhelming amount of information on the screen for you to process. So anything you can do to remove some clutter is helpful. And when you strike out that wrong answer choice, you’re also, in a sense, removing that clutter from your brain. That’s especially valuable to students with ADHD whose brains struggle to see the signal through the noise. They now have less to consider and the problem feels that much easier. The very act of eliminating that answer choice also just feels good, right? It’s a tangible sign that a student is making progress on a problem that otherwise might have you them staring and confused.

Distractions and Task Switching

Finally, all that the shorter questions and frequent task shifting that students profess to like may not actually be all that good for them. Distractions cause stress and errors. As Gloria Mark notes, there’s “a correlation between frequency of attention switching and stress. So the faster the attention switching occurs, [the higher their stress].” But why do those distractions cause errors? Anything that demands our attention creates an additional demand on our working memory. We can only hold so many tasks in our mind. Things get dropped. Now, where was I? Where is my phone? More so, a greater demand on any executive function (working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility) depletes cognitive resources for another demand. Oh, and importantly, error-monitoring is another executive function! As noted earlier, it is cognitively demanding to both do a task and assess oneself doing that task – catching one’s own error. For anyone prone to “stupid mistakes,” this is what is going on. For what it’s worth, it happens to all of us. It’s just that some people are more vulnerable than others; things like ADHD and anxiety increase the likelihood. And students may not even know it.

In a fascinating study, researchers found that brief interruptions of 2.8 seconds doubled error rates of subjects completing a task on a computer. ““So why did the error rate go up?” Altmann said. “The answer is that the participants had to shift their attention from one task to another. Even momentary interruptions can seem jarring when they occur during a process that takes considerable thought.”

These brief interruptions are part of life – phone notifications, texts, children, and spouses – all compete for our attention. But, standardized tests are purposefully administered in ways designed to minimize distractions. Cool! That is why they are proctored so formally. But, here’s what I experienced. On paper tests, I mostly have my head down. Taking the SAT on the computer, my head was literally up. Without intending to, I was more aware of other students and their computers. Of the room around me. Of the temperature in the room. Of that ceiling tile with a strange blob on the corner. Of the clock. It’s also worth noting that while students in the same room start the test at roughly the same time, they do not start at precisely the same time, as we all had our SAT timed on our own computer. With all these new distractions and the fact that my head was physically up in ways it has never been before (for someone who has taken the SAT countless times at this point), the timer on my screen feels different! And working memory is going to play an even larger role in this new SAT! So be ready! And remember on!