Working Memory Model

Working Memory Model

1. Baddeley

2. PHONOLOGICAL LOOP

   • auditory informnation & preserves order of information
   • phonological store
     • inner ear - holds the words you hear
   • articulatory process
     • inner voice - used for the words that are heard/seen
       • silently repeated (looped) in your inner voice
   • evidence
     • BADDELEY, THOMSON and BUCHANAN
       • word length effect research - whether people remember long words
         • test 1 - pps given short & long words on screens and aksed to write them down
         • test 2 - test repeated but while pps sang 'la la la'
         • pps remmebered short words better but when singing the effect of word length disappeared
           • singing fills phonological loop = SUPPORTS separate acoustic stores but we can't do 2 acoutsic tasks at once
   • capacity = 2 secs worth of information

3. CENTRAL EXECUTIVE

   • Most imporatant in problem solving and decision making & allocated tasks to the other three slave systems
     • Braver et al = brain scans used as evidence
       • PPs asked to dotasks involving the CE they found greater activity in the pre-frontal cortex. As tasks got harder - brain activity increases - demands in CE increase
         • scientific

4. VISUO-SPATIAL SKETCHPAD

   • visual/spatial information temporarily stored here
   • capacity of 3-4 objects
   • visual cache
     • what things look like
   • inner scribe
     • relationship between things
   • evidence
     • BADDELEY, GRANT, WIGHT & THOMPSON - pps given visual tracking tasks - 1/2 asked to describe angle of F while doing it and the other 1/2 performed a verbal task alongside it
       • visual + verbal tasks performed better

5. EPISODIC BUFFER

   • added after baddeley realised the model needed a general store
   • extra storage system
   • limited capacity of about 4 chunks
   • added by Baddeley in 2000
   • intergrates information from CE, PL, VSSP and also from LTM into chunks/episodes

6. dual task technique - created by Baddeley to test stores