Working Memory Model

working memory model - (baddeley and hitch)

consists of 5 features:

• central executive
• phonological loop
• visuospatial sketchpad
• episodic buffer

the working memory model is a representation of short or long term memory?

short term memory

central executive

takes in information and allocates limited attention to tasks and which subsystem will perform them. it has limited capacity and codes acoustically.

what are the subsystems the central executive can allocate information to?

phonological loop, episodic buffer and the visuospatial sketchpad

phonological loop

consists of 2 things - the articulatory loop and the phonological store. the capacity of the phonological loop is 2 seconds worth of information and it codes acoustically. phonological loop links to LTM.

phonological store

stores the words you hear into the phonological loop

articulatory loop

rehearses the words you're processing, keeping them in working memory until needed.

visuospatial sketchpad

consists of 2 things - visual cache and the inner scribe. the capacity of the VSS is 3/4 objects and the coding is visual. VSS links to LTM.

visual cache

stores visual data

inner scribe

stores where things are in relation to each other

episodic buffer

integrates information processed by other stores and maintains time sequencing. links to LTM.

research support for WMM - baddeley's dual task experiment in 1975

when participants carried out a verbal and visual task at the same time, the performance was similar.
when tasks were both visual or verbal, performance was significantly worse.
this was because both tasks would compete for the same subsystem. this shows that there must be separate subsystems for auditory and visual information

research support for WMM - shallice and warrington, KF

KF suffered a brain injury. his immediate recall of letters and numbers was better when he read them (visual) than when he read them aloud (acoustic). his phonological loop was damaged, but his visuospatial sketchpad was still intact. provides evidence for them being separate stores

limitation of the WMM - shallice and warrington, KF

it's unclear whether or not KF had other cognitive impairments from his injury. due to lack of control variables we can't give a valid argument that suggests that KF's injury directly influenced his memory loss.

limitation of the WMM - central executive

there's a lack of clarity over the central executive. it's the least understood component with no evidence to back it up, so it could be possible that it doesn't even exist.

limitation of the WMM - baddeley's dual task experiment

as it was a lab experiment, the situation is very unnatural due to the extreme control. therefore it has lower ecological validity and can't be applied to real life scenarios.