L6 - Evaluation Of WMM

Question 1

Neurobiological Evidence

Answer 1

• Shallice+Warrington: KF in motorbike study
• KF’s STM was bad for verbal information but not for visual information.
• Suggesting there are more than 1 type of STM: phonological loop for verbal and visuo spatial sketchpad for visual

Question 2

Laboratory Experiments

Answer 2

• 1) Baddeley+Hitch gave participants a duel task: to complete a reasoning task (central executive) and a read aloud task (phonological loop)
• Participants did well, supporting ideas of separate components in STM
• 2) Baddeley gave participants lists of words
• the words were short and long words
• participants were asked to recall the list in order and found participants could recall more short words than long words
• this is called the word length effect, and supports the duration of the phonological loop

Question 3

General evaluation

Answer 3

• 1) Has practical applications, improving the understanding of how people read, so helps with dyslexia
• 2) The central executive is vague and untestable
• Danasia (1985) said EVR who had a cerebral tumour removed had good reasoning skills but couldn’t make decisions. This indicated his central executive was both working and damaged