L5 - The Working Memory Model

Question 1

What is the WMM?

Answer 1

• Baddeley+Hitch (1974) said STM is more complex than being a temp store
• STM is an active store holding many pieces of info whilst they are being worked on
• LTM is the passive store that hold material learned by the STM

Question 2

What four parts make up the WMM

Answer 2

• Central Executive
• Phonological Loop
• Episodic Buffer
• Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

Question 3

What is the Central Executive?

Answer 3

• Drives the WMM
• Allocates data to other components called slave systems
• Deals with cognitive tasks e.g arithmetic
• Individuals have a limited attentional capacity so automated tasks makes less attention demands from the central executive, and let us perform other tasks

Question 4

What is the Phonological Loop

Answer 4

Components of working memory that deals with spoken and written material:

• Phonological store:
  The inner ear: speech perception and holds information in speech form for 1-2 seconds
• Articulary Loop:
  The inner voice: speech production and used to rehearse and store verbal information from the phonological store. Allows for maintenance rehearsal

Question 5

What is the visuo-spatial sketch pad?

Answer 5

• processes information in a visual or spatial form
• used for navigation
• referred to as the inner eye and has two sub components

Visual Cache
- stores visual material about form and colour
Inner Scribe
- handles spatial relationships

Question 6

What is the Episodic Buffer?

Answer 6

• Model needed a general storage component to operate
• slave systems only process and have temp storage systems for specific things
• a limited capacity store, integrating information from the rest of the WMM and the LTM