The working memory model - Baddeley & Hitch

Why was the WMM created?

• The MSM provides us with an oversimplified representation of human memory.

• The WMM focuses on STM /' ‘working memory’

• Baddeley and Hitch felt that STM was not just one store, but was made from different stores.

What is an issue with the WMM?

• Focusing on STM makes it reductionist as there is other memory stores like LTM.

How is the WMM supported?

• Supported by KF because as he couldn’t remember verbal things but he could remember visual things.

What is the basic understanding of the WMM?

• All information that comes through the sensory store is kept here for a period of time and ‘worked on’ before it is either lost or transferred somewhere else.

• We rely on this store for many functions such as remembering phone numbers, lists, mental calculations and reasoning.

A diagram of the WMM.

What are the 4 stores in the WMM?

• The central exe3cutive.

• Visuospatial sketchpad (inner eye)

• Phonological loop

• Episodic buffer
  

What is the central executives function?

• It drives the whole system and allocates data to the sub-systems - central part of working memory.

• Its function is to direct attention to particular tasks.

• Determines how the other parts of the model are used, and has the capacity to focus, divide and switch attention.

• Very limited capacity.

• It also deals with cognitive tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem solving.

What is the function of the visuospatial sketchpad (inner eye)

• Slave system.

• Used to manipulate verbal and spatial information.

• Stores and processes information in visual or spatial form.

• The visuospatial sketchpad is used for navigation.

• It can deal with information directly through images or information from LTM.

• Used when you have to plan a spatial task - e.g. getting from one place to another.

What is the visuospatial sketchpad split into, and what do they do?

• Visual cache - Stores information about form and colour.

• Inner scribe - Deals with spatial information and movement.

What is the phonological loops function?

• Slave system.

• Deals with spoken and written material.

• Limited capacity

• Sub-divided into:

• the phonological store which holds information in a speech based form.

• And the articulatory process which allows us to repeat verbal information in a loop.

What are the phonological store and articulatory process used for?

• The phonological store - Holds words you hear (difficulty when words sound the same.)

• The articulatory process - Used for words that are seen and heard (difficulty when the words are long.)

• These words are silently repeated (looped) which is a form of maintenance rehearsal.

What is the function of the episodic buffer?

• This was added by Baddeley in 2000.

• He felt that the model needed a more general store.

• Because the slave systems deal with specific types of information - there is nowhere to hold both visual and auditory information.

• The episodic buffer is multi-modal - it is not limited to one sense like the other two slave systems.

• Its job sems to be to ‘bind’ memories together, weaving visual memories and phonological memories into single episodes.

• Which then get stored in episodic LTM.