The working memory model

Made by:

Baddeley & Hitch

Central executive:

It monitors incoming data and makes decisions on which slave system gets what. Has a limited capacity

Phonological loop:

Stores auditory information. It has two parts: the phonological store, which stores the words you hear, and the articulatory process, which allows maintenance rehearsal

Visuo-spatial sketchpad:

Stores visual information, e.g. if you were asked to work out how many windows there are on a house you would visualise it.

It has a limited capacity (Baddeley says 3-4 items), a visual cache which stores visual data, and an inner scribe which is for the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Episodic buffer:

Brings material together from the slave systems into one memory rather than operate strands. It also provides a bridge between WMM & LTM

Research support - Case

KF could process visual information normally but could not process auditory information.

Research support - Dual-task

Baddeley (1975) studied dual-task performance. When performing two visual or verbal tasks performance was lower than one visual and one verbal. This supports the visuo-spatial sketchpad

Oversimplified

The central executive is not really explained in psychology. Baddelely believes that it needs to be understood more. showing that the WMM is not fully explained