Working Memory Model

Working Memory Model

1. The working memory model

   • Baddeley & Hitch (1974)
   • felt STM not just one store multiple sotres
   • Central executive (CE)
     • controls separate stores for acoustic & visual info
     • direct brains resources to one of three slave systems
   • Phonological Loop (PL)
     • deals with auditory info & order of info
   • Visuo-Spatial sketchpad (VSS)
     • is used for the planning of spatial tasks & temporary storage of visual and/or spatial info

2. Episodic buffer

   • Baddeley (2000)
     • added episodic buffer
     • PL contains phonological store - holds the words you here (inner ear) 1-2 seconds & articulatory process which allows for maintenance rehearsal of acoustic info, also linked to speech rehearsal
     • VSS - contains visual cache stores info about visual items & the inner scribe - deals with spatial relationships whilst storing the arrangements of objects in visual fields
   • a general store for visual & acoustic info
   • integrates info from CE, PL & VSS
   • sends info to LTM

3. Evaluation

   • dual task studies
     • Hitch & Baddeley (1976) participants were slower in dual task study that involved both central executive & articulatory loop, compared to task just required articulatory loop
     • demonstrates dual task performance effect & shows that the central executive is separate from the articulatory loop
     • supports idea of multiple components in STM & idea of WMM
   • case studies
     • Shallice & Warrington (1970) studied KF whose ST forgetting of auditory info was much greater than forgetting of visual info
     • therefore brain damage speared to be restricting his phonological loop & not visuo-spatial sketchpad
     • supports idea of a separate component for auditory & visual info suggested by WMM
   • central executive
     • Eslinger & Damasio (1985) studied EVR (had cerebral tumour removed) performed well on some tests requiring reasoning, he had poor decision making skills & would spend several hours making simple decisions
     • case of EVR suggests that the idea of single CE is wrong & there are possibly several different components within CE
     • suggests the function of the CE is more complex than Baddeley & Hitch had originally suggested
   • evidence of brain damaged patients
     • some of key evidence for WMM comes from case studies of brain damaged people
     • several probs with using such evidence, e.g. individuals may have difficulties in paying attention & therefore simply underperform in certain tasks
     • matters because the result of a single case study are diifficult/impossible to replicate & difficult to generalise to the general population - low external valdity
   • Evidence for phonological loop & articulatory process
     • The PL explains why the word length effect occurs, people are able to remember short words better than long words because the PL holds info for approximately 2 seconds & longer words don't fit
     • word length effect disappears if a person is given an articulatory suppression task, as participants are unable to rehearse info
     • these findings support the idea of phonological loop & articulatory process in the WMM