Cognitive Psychology: Working Memory Model Flashcards
Name the components of the WM
Central Executive, Phonological Loop, Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad, and Episodic Buffer
What is the Central Executive?
The Central Executive is the main component which controls and organizes the operations of the 3 slave systems,
What is the Phonological Loop?
The Phonological Loop is made up of two components: the Articulatory Process (aka the inner mouth) which stores vocabulary that is heard or seen; and the Phonological Store which stores sounds that are heard (aka the inner ear).
What is the Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad?
The Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad stores spatial and visual information. Visual information is what things look like, and Spatial information is the relation between things
What is the Episodic Buffer?
This has just been recently added to the WM by Baddeley (2000). This is a general store which usually stores memories of major events that happened in your life.
Name Evidence Supporting the Working Memory Model
Baddeley and Hitch (1976)
What was the procedure?
Gave ppts to do 2 tasks simultaneously, Task 1 involved the Central Executive, Task 2 either involved the articulatory loop, or both the CE and the AL or no additional task.
What did they find?
They found that in Task 1 it was slower when given a task involving both the CE and the Articulatory Loop. Speed on Task 2 was the same whether using the AL or no additional task. This shows that doing two tasks that involve the same component causes difficulty. It also shows that when different components are used performance is not affected.
Evidence of the CE
Bunge et al. used fMRI to see which parts of the brain were most active when ppts were doing two tasks. They found that there was a lot of activiation in the dual-task condition indicating that increased attentional demands were reflected in brain activity.
2 Strengths of the WM
> There have been a lot of studies recently which have shown physical evidence for the existence of WM, from a link between performing tasks and brain activation.
Brain damage Patients such as KF also indicate the existence of the WM as they show how parts of their short term abilities are inhibited but the remaining parts are still intact and can still use them to create short term information.
2 Weaknesses of the WM
> The Central Executive is too vague, not enough is known about it. Psychologists have thought that the Central Executive is made up of several parts.
The Evidence from Brain Damaged patients, first off due to being case studies; they lack validity as they have individual differences and cannot be replicated or applied to everyone else. Also the Brain Injury itself can be traumatic and in itself may have caused the change in behavior.
