C- Working Memory Model

Question 1

What is the WMM?

Answer 1

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
- development of MSM
- proposal of a more complex STM which uses multiple components and 3 loops.

Central executive—-> Phonological loop (phonological store, articulatory controll process)—–>
—-> Visuo- spatial sketchpad —-> Episodic buffer

Question 2

what is the Central Executive?

Answer 2

• control centre that allocates information to suitable loops
• can process info from any sense and from LTM
• involved in decision making & other higher mental processes- attention- automatic level, supervisory level
• can process a variety of information but has limited capacity.

Question 3

what is the Phonological loop?

Answer 3

• two components:
  1) phonological store- stores speech based info
  2) articulatory control process- rehearses info ‘inner ear’
• rehearsal necessary- auditory info only available for 2s without
• most extensively studied

Question 4

visuo- spatial sketchpad?

Answer 4

• stores visual and spatial information, either static or mobile
• ‘inner eye’
• visual cache- stores visual infor (colour and shape)
• inner scribe- spatial and movement info

Question 5

what is the episodic buffer?

Answer 5

• not added untill 2000
• gap in WMM- allowed subcomponents to interact
• links info across fields
• can access different sub-systems
• links STM to LTM

Question 6

what is the key study for WMM?

Answer 6

Landry and Bartling (2011)
- A- investigate if articulatory suppression affects the recall of written phonologically dissimilar letters in serial recall
- M- 34 undergrad students- experimental given list of random order of (FKLMRXQ) and asked to memorise while also saying ‘1’ and ‘2’ repeatedly- interference task.- control given no auditory supression- then asked to write in correct order- repeated 10 times
- R- experimental group lower scores- 45% success, control had 75%
- C- supports as overload in phonological loop due to auditory suppression caused lower success rate- rehearsal not possible-shows there is a sub section of STM that has limited capacity for AI

Question 7

Evaluation of landry and bartling (2011)

Answer 7

+ highly controlled, so valid cause and effect relationship determined
- lack ecological validity
- not general etc.

Question 8

evaluation of working memory model

Answer 8

+ large amount of supporting research- more likely to be accurate
+ a clinical example- KF (shallice and warrington 1970)
- lack of clarity over role of central exec- may not be an accurate rep as no research- WMM incomplete
- mostly lab-based research- lacls ecological validity- does not show how it works in a daily setting.

Question 9

biological case study?

Answer 9

patient KF (shallice and warrington 1970)- kf had accident that cause trauma- verbal intact, but could not longer process visual info.