Working Memory Model

Working Memory Model

1. The working memory model consists of an interactive model of components, the visuo-spatial sketchpad,central executive, episodic buffer and phonological loop. Their characteristics include that they have limited capacity and duration.

2. Central executive- this is modality free and is used for giving attention to things, proceeding to organise information to different parts. It is responsible for decision making, problem solving, planning and filtering out irrelevant information. It is considered the most important.

   • Baddeley- wanted to test whether the central executive could perform the tasks at once.

3. Baddeley and Hitch suggested that working memory model has several components which are modality based and the central executive is in control of these. The working memory model replaced short term memory and so we know from research that it has limited capacity and duration. It is also encoded acoustically ad visually.

4. Phonological loop- this is responsible for dealing with auditory information and then preserving the order the information on repeat. It consists of two parts the phonological store and the articulatory control process.

   • The phonological store, this acts as an inner ear meaning it holds spoken information stored for about 1-2 seconds. Written information must first be transferred into spoken form by the articulatory control process then back to the phonological store.
   • The articulatory control process is responsible for rehearsing information from the phonological store. It circulates the information around like a loop. As long as we keep repeating it we can keep this information in the working memory.

5. Visuo-spatial sketchpad. This is responsible for visual and spatial information, it is described as the inner eye. Visual information refers to what things look like. There are two sections of the visuospatial sketchpad.

   • The inner scribe- this stores information about the physical relationships of items, 3D information.
   • The visual cache- this stores information on colour and shape.

6. The episodic buffer- It is a temporary store that integrates information from the other components and maintains a sense of time, so that events occur in a continuing sequence.