Working Memory Model

Who was the Working memory model proposed by?

Baddeley&Hitch 1974

Summary of WMM

Cognitive model used to understand memory. STM not thought of as a single unitary store.

What are the 4 components of the WMM?

• Central executive

• Visuospatial sketchpad

• Episodic Buffer

• Phonological loop

Briefly explain the central executive

• Control centre that allocates tasks to other slave systems

• Capacity: limited

• Coding: modality free

Briefly explain the phonological loop

• Deals with auditory information

• Articulatory control system associated with speech production (inner voice )

• Phonological store is auditory

• Capacity: 1-2 seconds

• Coding: acoustically

Briefly explain the visuospatial sketchpad

• Processes visual and spatial information

• Visual cache stores visual data

• Inner scribe deals with the visual field and relationship with objects

• Capacity: 3-4 objects

• Coding: Visual and Spatial

Episodic Buffer

• Integrated information from other stores

• Records events that are happening and sends info to LTM

• Capacity: limited, 4 chunks

• Coding: multi modal

Summarise Baddeley’s research on dual processing

• Method: Participants had to track a point of light moving. Visual imagery task: imagine a capital letter and mentally move round its angles. Verbal task: simple reasoning task

• Findings: Pps found it more difficult to perform the tracking task when completing the imagery task than when completing verbal task

Summarise Baddeley’s research on duration of phonological loop

• Method: Participants were given a brief visual presentation of words either consisting of single syllables or multi syllables

• Findings: Pps were more likely to recall words when they were single syllables as they can be said in a shorter period

Summarise Bunge’s Research

• Method: Used fMRI to see which parts of the brain were most active when pps were reading a sentence and recalling last word of the sentence)

• Findings: more brain activity during dual tasks, indicating increased demands on memory

Opposing evidence

P: Tasks are artificial and lack ecological validity

E: Dual task experiments are conducted in controlled lab settings where pps complete unrealistic activities that do not reflect everyday memory use

E: Findings may not represent how memory operates in real life scenarios like in a busy classroom

L: Reduces validity of memory conclusions

Debates

• P: Reductionist in explaining human memory

• E: Berz1995 founds pps could listen to instrumental music without impairing performance on other tasks

• E: Phonological loop may not fully explain how auditory information is processed

• L: Oversimplifies complexity of human memory

Application to real life

• P: Education and understanding learning difficulties

• E: Deficits in working memory are a feature of ADHD and dyslexia- causes problems in classrooms with following instruction reading and writing

• E: By identifying weaknesses in components like phonological loop or central executive teachers can provide targeted support like visual aids

• L: Valuable because it supports individuals with memory impairments