WORKING MEMORY MODEL

WORKING MEMORY MODEL

1. Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

   • Central executive
     • This is the key component of the WMM
     • The function of the CE is to direct attention to a particular tax, determining at any time hoe resources are allocated to tasks
       • The resources are three slave systems. Data arrives from the senses or LTM
     • It has a very limited capacity: it can't attend to many things at once
   • Slave systems
     • Phonological loop
       • Limited capacity
       • It deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information
       • Baddeley further subdivided this group
         • Phonological store
           • inner ear
           • It holds the words you hear
         • Articulatory process
           • inner voice
           • is used for the word that are heard or seen.
             • these word are silently repeated, a form of maintenance rehearsal
     • Visuo-spatial sketchpad
       • is used when you have to plan a spatial task i.e. counting the windows in your house
       • visual and spatial information is temporarily stored here
       • Visuo- what things look like
         • Spatial- relationship between things
     • Episodic buffer (added by Baddeley in 2000)
       • realised the model needed a general store
       • Limited capacity
       • the EB integrate information from the CE, phonological loop ad Visuo-spatial sketchpad and also from long-term memory

2. EVALUATION

   • Research evidence
     • Baddeley (1986)
       • Evidence for the different parts of memory processing
         • asked participant to remember a list of numbers whilst carrying out a verbal reasoning task
           • if the STM were unitary as proposed by MSM then after 7 digits there would be no room left to carry out the task 2. However this was not the case. Both tasks could be preformed at the same time
     • Baddeley et al (1975)
   • Criticisms
     • Strengths
       • Brain scans
         • Shown that different areas of the brain is active when carrying out verbal tasks and visual task. this supports the idea that there are different parts of memory for visual and verbal tasks as this is what the model predicts
       • The case study of KF
         • after a motorbike accident his memory for verbal information was impaired, but his memory of visual information was unaffected this supports the WMM as it says is contains the two separate slave systems control different parts of memory, hence one was damaged but not the other
     • Limitations
       • The role of the CE is unclear, although it is the most important part of the model. It says that the CE has a limited capacity but it is impossible to test this separately form the slave systems. this means we are unclear about how it works or operates and how it could be tested, therefore it lack Empirical evidence,
       • The WMM is limited to only the STM and says nothing about the LTM therefore it is an incomplete model of memory