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Who proposed the Working Memory Model?
Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
what is the WMM?
explanation of how STM is organised and how it functions. This model replaces the idea of a unitary STM and suggests that it is a system involving active processing.
what is the WMM made up of?
4 components
the 4 components:
central executive
visuo-spatial sketchpad
episodic buffer
phonological loop
role of central executive:
has a ‘supervisory’ role where it controls its ‘slave’ subsystems.
controls attention by deciding what sensory info will be attended to and delegates this to the other systems.
has limited processing capacity and does not store info.
role of visuo-spatial sketchpad
subsystem of CE
stores visual and spacial data
limited capacity - according to Baddeley it is 3/4 objects
made up of 2 parts (Logie 1986)
Visual Cache - stores visual data
inner scribe - records arrangement of objects in visual field.
role of phonological loop:
subsystem
deals with auditory info
codes acoustically
made up of 2 parts
phonological store - stores what you hear, limited by duration of 2 sec.
articulatory processes - allows maintenance rehearsal
role of episodic buffer:
subsystem
added to model later in 2000 by Baddeley
temporary store for info
integrates and manipulates spatial, visual and verbal info processed by other stores and maintains a sense of time sequencing - recording events.
limited capacity of 4 chunks - Baddeley
links working memory to LTM.
evaluation of WMM Shallice and Warrington:
studied KF, a patient with brain injury
Had poor ability for auditory info but could process visual info normally
Recall for words/digits was better when he read them then when they were read to him
Suggests that his phonological loop was damaged but his vision-spatial sketchpad was intact.
However it’s a clinical study so variables cannot be controlled and it’s not clear if KF had any other brain injuries
Baddeley’s study of phonological loop:
aim - to investigate the existence of a phonological loop in STM.
Procedure: ppts saw everyday words displayed quickly one after the other, then were asked to write them in serial order.
Condition 1 - words contained 5 one syllable words
Condition 2 - words contained 5 polysyllabic words
Findings - participants more likely to recall one syllable, shorter words.
Conclusion - phonological loop has a role in the capacity of STM, amount you can hold is determined by the length of time it takes to say the words, loop can hold info lasting about 2 secs.
Baddley’s study of viso-spatial sketchpatch
aim - to investigate the existence of a visuo-spatial sketchpad.
procedure - ppts were asked to complete a visual tracking task at the same time as describing angels on a latter.
findings - ppts found it difficult to complete these 2 tasks simultaneously. When asked to perform one visual and one auditory task the ppts performed much better.
conclusion - difficult to perform 2 tasks if they make use of the same store, but its possible to perform 2 tasks making use of different stores.
provides evidence that there are seperate stores for the visual and auditory info.
Dual task study:
Baddley and Hitch
lab experiment
procedure - participants asked to perform 2 tasks at the same time, a digit span task and a verbal reasoning task ( true or false questions).
findings - as number of digits increased in the digit span task, participants took longer answering the reasoning questions but didn’t make any more errors in the verbal reasoning task as the number of digits increased.
As they performed more than one task using both the central executive and phonological loop their performance got worse.
conclusions - verbal reasoning task made use of the CE and the digit span task made use of the PL, providing evidence that both stores exist.
Criticism: low ecological validity
Nature of Central Executive:
lack of clarity over the nature of the CE
Baddley himself recognized that it is the most important but the least understood component.
Eg - need to be more clearly specified and described other than just being the ‘attention’.
some psychologists believe it may consist of separate sub components.
means that the CE is unsatisfactory which challenges the completeness of the WMM + its integrity.
Clinical evidence:
Shallice +Warrington
case study of KF
after his brain injury he had poor STM ability for auditory info but could process visual info normally.
eg - immediate recall of letter better when he read them then when they were read to him.
suggests his phonological loop was damaged but his visuo-spatial sketchpad stayed intact.
criticisms - unclear if KF had other cognitive impairments which could have affected his performance, challenges evidence from clinical studies of people with brain injuries that may have affected many different systems.