The Working Memory Model Baddeley and Hitch

The Working Memory Model Baddeley and Hitch

1. Episodic Buffer

   • Integrates information from the CE, PL, V-SS and LTM
     • e.g. singing a song whilst parking your car
   • Limited capacity
   • Used as a general store

2. Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

   • A temporary storage system for holding visual and/or spatial information
     • Baddeley: Group A P's were asked to complete a visual tracking task at the same time as describing the angles on a letter. Group B were asked to complete a visual tracking task while carrying out a verbal task
       • Group B P's performed much better, supporting the idea of different stores in the STM
       • Lab study - hight control of extraneous variables - high internal validity
         • Lacks ecological validity and mundane realism
   • Includes a 'visual cache' for storing visual information about form and colour
     • e.g. knowing which colours match and clash
   • Responsible for the 'inner scribe' which handles spatial relationships
     • e.g. deciding if your car will fit in a parking space

3. Phonological Loop

   • Responsible for holding auditory information
     • Case study of KF. KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory. KF's impairment was mainly for verbal information - his memory for visual information was largely unaffected
   • Responsible for the 'articulatory store' (inner voice) - a verbal rehearsal loop which holds the words we are preparing to speak
     • e.g. knowing which words come next in a song
     • Baddeley reported on the word length effect. P's recalled more short words in serial order than longer words, suggesting the capacity of the PL is set by how long it takes to say words rather than how many words there are
   • Also known as the 'inner ear'

4. Central Executive

   • This is the 'supervisory component' and can process any type of information (visual, acoustic etc.)
     • Criticised for being 'too vague'
     • Eslinger and Damasio's study of EVR suggests that there is more than one central executive as EVR could perform reasoning tasks well but had poor decision making skills.
       • If there was only one CE he should have either been able to do both of the tasks or neither of them.
       • Case studies can't be generalised to the rest of the population
   • Limited capacity but can delegate information to its two 'slave systems'
   • It is responsible for coordinating the activity needed to carry out more than one processing task at a time and for starting the rehearsal process.
     • Bunge used evidence from FMRI scans to show that there was more brain activation during a dual-task activity (reading a sentence and recalling the final word) than a single-task activity (just reading the sentence)
       • This suggests that if you increase the demands of attention it is reflected in actual brain activity
       • Direct measure, objective so increases the validity of the findings

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