Baddeley & Hitch : Working memory model.

Baddeley & Hitch : Working memory model.

1. Suggests it contains a Central Executive, along with a Phonological loop, Episodic buffer and Visio-spatial scetchpad - All leads to long term memory store.

   • Central exectutive: Gives overall control. Has a limited capacity. Grabs attention. Directs operation of slave systems.
   • Phonological loop: Articulatory control system & responsible for acoustic coding.
   • Visio-spatial stetchpad: Inner eye & responsible for visial spatial coding.. for example, remembering where the car is parked.
   • Episodic buffer: General store. was added to the model later, to account for things that use both visual and acoustic info.

2. Studies supporting

   • Baddeley & Lewis (1981): Articulatory suppression led to difficulties when reading and understanding texts. (suggests different stores)
   • Hitch and baddeley (1976): found that participants performance on verbal task was slowed down when they repeated a string of digits at the same time.
   • Gathercole and baddeley (1976): children with reading problems had an impaired memory and had difficulties saying whether words rhymed, suggesting there is a phonological loop problem.

3. Evaluation

   • In Support:
     • Broadens the role of the STM store, by emphasising its importance in active processing as well as storage,.
     • Central executive links memory with attention.
     • Model has practical applications in helping children to read by suggesting that the difficulties may be because of problems in the phonological loop
   • Problems and limitations,:
     • we dont know a lot about the central executive.
     • Might be oversimplified to have only one central executive.
     • The visio-spatial store hasnt been explored in as much depth as the other slave systems.