WORKING MEMORY MODEL- BADDELEY AND HITCH

WORKING MEMORY MODEL- BADDELEY AND HITCH

1. CENTRAL EXECUTIVE

   • PHONOLOGICAL LOOP
     • Acoustic information
     • Has a limited capacity meaning it can only rehearse acoustic material up to a certain length
     • Could be linked to dyslexia
     • Phonological store
     • Articulatory loop- rehearsal
   • VISUO-SPATIAL SKETCHPAD
     • Holds visual and spatial information
     • Allows information to be rehearsed visually
     • Limited capacity- people find it hard to perform multiple visual tasks at one time
     • Visual Cache
       • Stores form and colour information
     • Inner Scribe
       • Rehearsal system
   • This store processes information from any sense
   • Controls the whole model
   • Limited capacity
   • This component may involve an area of the brain called the pre-frontal otex
     • Activated when someone performs more than one task at a time

2. EVALUATION

   • Explains the STM more indepth
   • Explains how it works rather than being just a structural reference
   • Unclear whether the visual and phonological are separate or not
   • Doesn't explain LTM

3. EVIDENCE

   • THOMSON ET AL- gave visual representations of lists for a small amount of time. They were then asked to write them in order. Conditions one were words of on syllable, condition two was polysyllable. People remembered shorter words (word length affect) Shows the phonological loop has a limited capacity because it was better at rehearsing shorter words of 1.5 seconds.
   • GRANT ET AL- tracking task- following a spot of light whit a tracker while carrying out a visual task of looking at rectangular block letters. They then had to answer questions about the shape of the letter. It was found that people couldn't track the light and answer the questions correctly at the same time- it was competing for the same store
   • LIBERMAN- blind people have spatial awareness
   • Baddeley