2.2: The central executive (CE)

Question 1

Outline the central executive component of the WMM (3 marks)

Answer 1

The central executive acts as a filter to decide which information received by the sensory organs is attended to

Question 2

Outline the central executive component of the WMM (3 marks).
The central executive acts as a filter to decide which information received by the sensory organs is attended to.
What does it then do?

Answer 2

It then sends attended information to relevant slave systems

Question 3

Outline the central executive component of the WMM (3 marks).
The central executive acts as a filter to decide which information received by the sensory organs is attended to.
It then sends attended information to relevant slave systems.
It is the central executive that allows us to do what?

Answer 3

It is the central executive that allows us to switch attention between different inputs of sensory information

Question 4

An experiment was carried out to investigate the working memory model.
One group of participants was asked to carry out two visual tasks at the same time. A different group of participants was asked to carry out a visual task and a verbal task at the same time.
The results showed that the participants who carried out two visual tasks at the same time performed less well on the tasks than participants who carried out a visual task and a verbal task at the same time.
Use your knowledge of the working memory model to explain this finding (3 marks)

Answer 4

Participants would find it hard to do two visual tasks at the same time, because they would be competing for the same limited resources of the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
However, a visual task and a verbal task would use different components