working memory model

what is the WMM and who proposed it

BADDELEY and HITCH

-explanation for how stm is organised and how it functions

-focuses on when your mind is active to temporarily store and manipulate info e.g. when playing chess

what is the central executive

the director/ head of the model, it receives and filters incoming information and then directs our attention towards one of the slave systems: phonological loop, VSS, episodic buffer

has a limited capacity and can only hold one piece of information at a time

what is the phonological loop

deals with auditory info, subdivided into:

phonological store - stores words you hear

articulatory process - maintenance rehearsal = repeats information you hear in a loop to keep them in the stm

what is the visuospatial sketchpad VSS

deals with visual info, subdivided into:

visual cache - stores visual info

inner scribe - allows you to visualise your surroundings and the arrangement of things

what is the episodic buffer

temporarily stores and combines all types of information such as chronological info e.g. the order in which events happen

added to wmm later on due to: central executive can only hold one piece of info at a time & slave systems only store a specific type of information phonological loop (only deals with auditory info) and visuospatial sketchpad (only deals with visual info)

what do the 3 slave systems connect to and why is this important

visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer and phonological loop all connected to LTM which allows for:

elaborative rehearsal, when information is encoded with meaning so passes straight from stm to ltm

retrieval, passing info back into stm so it passes through maintenance rehearsal in a loop